Markets won’t like bad jobs numbers on Friday

THE experts are very confident that Friday’s report on the employment market for November will show the least number of job losses in quite a while, perhaps as few as 114,000.

I hope that’s true. But I don’t think it will be.

As you know, these monthly job figures are very important to traders on Wall Street who can make money when the financial markets are confronted with surprises.

And with all that’s going on in the world — Dubai’s problems, America’s economic crisis and the US stock market’s seeming indifference to both — a bad report Friday will just add to the straws on the camel’s back.

For the rest of us, the jobs numbers — including the oft-discussed and much-headlined unemployment rate — are mostly something to smirk at.

By now everyone hopefully knows that the figures put out on the first Friday of every month by the US Labor Department are a stew of guesses, wishful thinking and estimates.

If you are one of the millions looking for a job you probably already know that the employment situation just doesn’t improve that much from one month to the next.

Yet the consensus among experts is that only 114,000 jobs were lost in November. If that turns out to be the figure released, it would be a whole lot better than the rate of job losses earlier this year, when three or four times that number of positions were lost every 30 days.

And it would even be a big improvement from the 190,000 jobs that actually disappeared in October, a figure that was larger than the experts expected.

What I think the “experts” are missing is this: the monthly employment figures — both when they were horrible earlier this year and got better this spring — have been greatly influenced not only by what’s going on in the real world but also by estimates being made by the Department of Labor.

And these estimates have gone haywire because — as everyone knows — this is a one-of-a- kind economic downturn.

My editors cringe every time I bring up this subject because it’s probably better studied at a university than in a tabloid.

But there is something the Labor Department calls the Birth/Death model — jobs it believes, but can’t prove, are being created by newly-formed companies.

It’s this guess that is throwing off the consensus builders.

So let’s take the belief that only 114,000 jobs were lost in November. I’d agree with the others if November were one of those months in which the Labor Department typically adds a whole lot of make-believe Birth/Death jobs.

But that’s not the case. November only gets around 20,000 make-believe Birth/Death jobs added to its count, compared with — say — 176,000 in April and May.

So if Friday’s number is going to produce the pleasant surprise the experts want, it’s going to have to come from actual job growth and not statistical shenanigans.

I’m telling you this not because I want to ruin your day. But I do want to make you aware of the fact that a worse than expected number on Friday isn’t reason to panic.

The Obama administration has stopped publicizing the number of jobs it believes have been saved by the current stimulus package.

Now the administration is talking about finding another way to create jobs — without causing the federal deficit to go any higher.

A few more bad job reports and there’s no telling what stupid moves our desperate politicians will make.

The unemployment rate, which is compiled after phone calls to people at home, is expected to stay put at 10.2 percent.

That’ll be nice, if it happens. But the broader rate of underemployment that the government puts out is already at 17.5 percent and has been getting a lot more attention lately.

The figure — called the U-6 unemployment rate — has been jumping 0.5 to 0.8 percentage points a month.

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I sent another note to the Obama administration through mutual friends explaining that the only way to stimulate the economy without incurring more deficits is to change the tax laws on personal retirement accounts.

Let people who actually have assets purchase some of the real estate that is overhanging the market.

The “experts” in Washington don’t like the idea because they think Americans are too stupid to decide on whether this is a good time to buy real estate.

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Experts are noting that the nation’s money supply (aka, the monetary base) has been ex panding rapidly for more than a year — until now.

But there’s a problem. Banks have a lot of money. But rather than lend it out to the econ omy, they seem to be placing excess levels of reserve funds with the Federal Reserve, which is paying interest on the money.

That might help the profits of banks. But it does nothing for the economy. john.crudele@nypost.com