This morning, my Twitter stream was filled with some of the most outlandish bullish economic victory laps from pundits I’ve ever seen. The source was the monthly employment report, which showed a larger than expected increase in employment as well as higher wages. In addition, there was a huge upward revision to employment data in November. Interestingly enough, on the same day this report was released, several important articles came across my screen that make me as concerned as ever about the true state of the economy and where we are headed.

First, CNN Money just yesterday published an article titled: Obama Jobs: More Caregivers, Servers and Temps. Here are a few excerpts:

Got a job while Obama was president? Then there’s a good chance you are working in healthcare or food service or as a temp.

Those sectors were responsible more than 60% of the jobs created since Obama took office in January 2009.

Healthcare now employs 14.9 million Americans, up 11% over the past six years, according to a recent Pew Research Center report. More than one in 10 payroll jobs in the U.S. are in this industry.

Much of the job growth in healthcare has taken place in home health care services and outpatient care. That follows both the aging of America and the shift away from more costly hospital and nursing home care. These later two industries added only 3.7% and 1.2% more jobs, respectively, since 2009.

Meanwhile, bars, restaurants and other food-service employers have also been adding to their payrolls. More than 10.8 million people now work in this industry, up 14.6% over the past six years.

And temporary help agencies saw their employment soar 52.5% during the Obama administration to just under 3 million.

Here’s a chart:

For concerning story number two, I turn your attention to a New York Times article titled: Global Debt Has Risen by $57 Trillion Since the Financial Crisis, Which Is Scary. Here are a few excerpts:

Here are two things we know about how debt affects the economy.

First, in the abstract it doesn’t matter. For every debtor there is a creditor, and in theory an economy should be able to hum along just fine whether a country’s citizens have a great deal of debt or none. A company’s ability to produce things depends on the workers and machines it employs, not the composition of its balance sheet, and the same can be said of nations.

Second, in practice this is completely wrong, and debt plays an outsize role in creating boom-bust cycles across the world and through history. High debt increases the amplitude of economic swings. To think of it in terms of the corporate metaphor, high reliance on borrowed money may not affect a company’s level of output in theory, but makes it a great deal more vulnerable to bankruptcy.

Read More at:  Liberty Blitzkrieg