You Can’t Trust the Government’s Numbers Anymore (As If You Needed a Reminder)

When Bureaucrats Admit They Were Off on Job Losses by Two-Thirds

The December jobs report is out. The U.S. added just 50,000 jobs—well below the 73,000 expected. That’s the bad news. The good news: unemployment fell to 4.4% from 4.5%, and wage growth ticked up to 3.8%.

On the surface, weak but not terrible. Not exactly the job market collapse I’ve been writing about.

But here’s the problem: you can’t trust any of these numbers.

The Revision

The December report included revisions to previous months. November’s job figures were revised down by 8,000. October’s revision was worse.

The government initially reported October’s job losses at 105,000—already the biggest monthly decline since late 2020. The actual figure? A loss of 173,000 jobs.

They were off by 68,000 jobs. In other words, they underestimated job losses by nearly two-thirds.

That’s not a rounding error. That’s a complete misread of the labor market.

And it's not like this is the first time it happens. This is a pattern.

Month after month, the initial jobs report understates the weakness. Then, months later, after the headlines have moved on, the revisions quietly show things were worse than reported.

So when the government tells you December added 50,000 jobs, how confident should you be? I’m not so sure about that. We’ll see what the revision says in the upcoming months.

Why This Matters

These employment numbers drive trillion-dollar decisions. They’re supposed to tell us the state of the economy—whether we’re heading into a recession or not. Businesses decide whether to hire. Workers decide whether to switch jobs. Investors position portfolios. And, of course, the Fed is supposed to base policy on them.

Yet even the Fed now concedes the data isn’t reliable.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell himself recently acknowledged that job figures are being drastically overstated—by as much as 60,000 jobs per month.

That admission matters, because it explains behavior that otherwise makes little sense.

If inflation were truly under control, and the labor market genuinely strong, the Fed wouldn’t have reversed course so quickly. Yet in 2025, instead of holding rates steady—or tightening further—they cut three times.

Yes, President Trump was certainly part of it, but the unspoken message was clear: we can’t actually bring prices down anymore, so we’ll try to make wages rise faster than inflation and hope people feel better about it.

The problem is that they don’t.

Remember, according to the latest report, wages are growing at about 3.8%. Meanwhile, the real rate of inflation—measured by money supply growth, not the government's CPI theater—is running closer to 5–6%.

That means most Americans are taking real pay cuts right now, whether they realize it or not.

What Happens Next

But those pay cuts are about to get much worse.

As I’ve been writing to you lately, the Fed quietly turned the money printer back on December 12, pumping about $40 billion a month into Treasury bills.

Powell calls it “reserve management.” Others call it technical “plumbing.” We call it stealth money printing.

Because while it isn’t technically quantitative easing (QE)—the Fed isn’t buying long-dated Treasuries or mortgage-backed securities—it is money creation. Plain and simple. The Fed is injecting $40 billion in fresh liquidity into the system every single month.

History is also very clear on this point. Every time the Fed launches programs like this—whatever label it slaps on them—it ends the same way: with full-scale QE not far behind.

(I’ve covered this in more detail here.)

Now, if you’re an investor in precious metals, commodities, or mining stocks, this setup isn’t necessarily bad news. Money printing creates bubbles. And while bubbles destroy sound economies, they’re a speculator’s best friend.

But if you’re a worker—particularly in a sector vulnerable to slowdowns, restructuring, or automation—it’s a different story. Especially if you don’t own “unprintable” assets like gold.

Have a good rest of the weekend,

Lau Vegys

P.S. Doug Casey believes the Fed’s return to the printing press will set off a massive bubble in commodities—especially in monetary metals like gold and silver. That’s why a big portion of our Crisis Investing portfolio is in mining stocks, which Doug himself owns. In our latest issue, we reviewed all our 2025 picks, including our precious metals plays—which were among our best performers. If you’re not yet a subscriber, the lead is free for all readers.