A Golden Double-Edged Sword

"This week's ISM Manufacturing Index indicates that the services sector contracted quite strongly. The BLS report issued on Frday, however, claims that 86,000 jobs were added in the sector (52,000 of which are purely temporary jobs). The number of Americans in the category Persons Not in the Labor Force rose by almost 300,000 just in the last month. Estimates are that over 3 million people have "disappeared" in this fashion in 2009. The BLS throws out everyone who it claims has not searched for work in the past 4 weeks, though they are unemployed."