In a world where job numbers wield significant influence over perceptions of economic health, it's crucial to scrutinize the data—and the methods behind their presentation—closely.

In his latest podcast, Peter Schiff delves into the murky waters of government economic reporting.

This morning's non-farm payroll numbers blew past expectations:

The January number, the consensus was 170,000 and we got 353,000 jobs, so more than double the estimate. But even if you look at the consensus range of estimates, the low number was 120,000, the high number was 200,000, so we almost doubled the high end of the range. Also, the unemployment rate fell from 3.8% to 3.7%, so more good news, right? The unemployment rate is lower."

Even in manufacturing, jobs showed strength:

Even manufacturing, 23,000 manufacturing jobs versus the 5,000 that had been expected. That's one of the biggest increases in manufacturing jobs despite the fact that manufacturing is in a recession, and all the manufacturing numbers are horrible. For some unexplained reason, during this manufacturing recession, there's all these manufacturing jobs that are being added."