First of all – let’s talk jobs.  

The markets managed to end the week on a high note as a huge beat on the headline Non-Farm Payroll number stunned us all with 271,000 jobs added in October. In our morning post on Friday, I noted we were skeptical and would be shorting into the weekend in our Live Member Chat Room and we did – fortunately.  

As it turns out, upon closer examination, pretty much all of those additional jobs were part-time jobs and, in fact, people in the prime working age group (25-54) LOST 35,000 jobs in October. What seems to have happened is that full time jobs were replaced with part time jobs for retirees. Multiple job holders increased by 109,000 in October, an indication that people who lost full time jobs had to take two or more part time jobs in order to make ends meet.  

Also, 94.5M people dropped out of the work force, giving us the lowest labor-force participation rate since the recession of the 1970s. If you want to know the story in just one chart – here’s what’s been happening in our economy since 2007 as the servant class increases dramatically while middle-class jobs disappear permanently:

Again, if you are in the Top 1%, congratulations – this is what “winning” looks like. After all, we NEED more servants. We need them more than we need our 20th car because silverware doesn’t polish itself and each kid should have their own Nanny and why should we pay one person a lot of money to do a job when we can pay two people a little money instead? When we pay two people part-time, neither gets benefits and neither one feels like they have any leverage over us – saving us lots of money down the road!  

When I go to Chilie’s, there’s one waitress running around serving 5 or 6 tables and I have to wait for food which costs about $25 per person by the time I get my check and pay the tip. When I go to Nobu, my waiter has perhaps 3 other tables but also support staff and I can barely put my napkin down without it being folded for me.