About That Year-Long “Critical” Saline Shortage

In addition to its previously discussed farcical seasonal adjustment that made a slumping unadjusted Employment index appear as if it was the highest in adjusted series history, which brought a smile to many faces, today’s Non-manufacturing PMI report had a far more curious datapoint that slipped largely under the radar: the ISM’s disclosure of the “commodities in short supply.”
Two of these were also quite comical.
One was labor, which would be a required condition to complete the spin of surging seasonally-adjusted labor conditions, however which would promptly dissolve into a puff of propaganda upon a quick glance at the other set of data, the one showing real hourly wages, and the fact that these have declined in 6 of the past 7 months (and since the data comes from the BLS using an incorrect estimation of inflation, the real wage situation is far more dire). So sadly, judging by the lack of rising wages, a labor shortage is the last thing the ISM’s goalseeked respondents have to worry about.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on 11/05/2014.