Help Wanted: One Million People to Count to 300

True contrarians should have employment on their minds.

Right now everyone is calling for unemployment to stay high for a long time. Bloomberg’s latest survey economist puts the median forecast for unemployment to stay above 10% for 2010. 

I’m sure if Irving Fisher were alive today, he’d say unemployment has “reached a permanently high plateau.”

But over the weekend, Larry Summers, the Director of the National Economic Council, made a bold prediction on unemployment. He said, “By spring employment growth will start to turn positive.”

Now, the call seems like a bold one only a contrarian could seriously consider, but in actuality it is near certain the employment numbers are about to get a lot better very quickly.

You see, 2010 is a census year and that means lots of jobs. Temporary jobs, granted, but they will reduce the unemployment rolls.

According to the Census Bureau, approximately 1.4 million people will be hired to conduct the 2010 Census. About 700,000 of them will be classified as enumerators – the people who actually do the counting.

Considering census questionnaires need to be mailed in by April and the enumerators start hitting the pavement to count the folks who didn’t mail in their questionnaire, there’s still a lot of “positive job growth” to come from the Census Bureau in the months to come.

That’s why, even if the real economy fails to create any job growth, it will appear that is has on the surface as the Census bureau ramps up its staff.

In the end, the unemployment situation will not improve until businesses get some certainty over what their costs will be (healthcare, energy, taxes, etc.).

Over the near-term, however, we expect a noticeable increase in employment (and one that’s excessively pointed to by politicians).

That’s why, in our free contrarian investing newsletter, the Prosperity Dispatch, we foresee the combination of everyone expecting the unemployment to stay and the Census Bureau’s hiring spree are clear catalysts for a surprising turn in the short-term.

Good investing,

Andrew Mickey
Chief Investment Strategist, Q1 Publishing