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Posted on 02/08/2012 10:10:00 AM PST by GVnana
President Obama last week brandished new jobs numbers as proof that his policies were having an effect on the unemployment rate, which the report said declined to 8.3 percent in January.
The president is right about one thing: his big government agenda and class warfare tactics are having an effect -- but it's not the one he claims. In truth, last month's drop in the unemployment statistic was due largely to the evaporation of 1.2 million people from the labor force number. When people become so discouraged they stop actively looking for work, they are no longer counted as unemployed and the rate goes down even though Americans are hardly better off than they were before.
The rate went down in January because (apparently) 1.2 million people decided in a single month not to pursue work. This is the number, in effect, that President Obama is touting.
The January report caps an extraordinary decline in the participation rate that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been reporting under the Obama administration. Since January 2009, the BLS said more than five million people have dropped out of the labor force -- the greatest decline in American history and the lowest participation rate in more than three decades. Only about six in 10 adult American civilians are counted as part of the labor force.
A few more good jobs reports like this and we'll have a three percent unemployment rate with nobody working.
(Bold added) See complete article at link.
(Excerpt) Read more at humanevents.com ...
Now you see ‘em, now you don’t...
I keep looking for the report that shows how much the welfare recipient numbers have grown, in correlation with the "unemployment" numbers going "down". Can't seem to find that study/report.
“The best analysis I’ve seen.”
Too bad it’s not true. 1.2 million people did not leave the labor force in January. Once a decade, after the census numbers are fully digested, the Bureau of Labor Statistics does a “catch-up” addition to the labor force. This squares away their previous guesses about population and labor growth over the last decade with the true growth as determined by the census.
BLS found that they had undercounted population growth during the 2000s by 1.5 million people - 300,000 in the labor force, and 1.2 million not. That’s where the 1.2 million came from - it’s a decade long fudge factor and in no way related to the number of people who decided they no longer wanted to seek work last month.
January 2012 - Total USA Jobs - 141.6 million
Total USA Job Loss Under Obama - 550,000
As usual, our pitifully incompetent candidates have allowed Obama and the MSM to steal the headlines with his 3.1 million “Job Creation” claim.
Total Government Sector Job loss since January 2009 is about 300,000.
Total Private Sector Job loss since January 2009 is about 250,000.
Way to go GOP candidates and GOP media!
90% of voters have no idea this is true.
Thanks for the post.
Gingrich, Limbaugh and many Conservative writers have been beating this straw man for the last week.
The real issues are.....
(1) The Great Recession ended in June 2009.
(2) Total Employment is down 550,000 since Obama took office.
So next month there should be no change since the fudge factor has been taken into account? BTW: wasn't there decreases in the November and December as well?
Apples and oranges warning -or just plain bs.
“...had undercounted population growth during the 2000s by 1.5 million people - 300,000 in the labor force, and 1.2 million not. That’s where the 1.2 million came from”
Ok, if the 1.2 million were not in the labor force than why would they be removed from the labor force count? Or are children and the elderly now considered part of the labor force?
Per your info. the labor force should have increased by 300,000.
The facts are just as reported, population is increasing yet the “labor force” is declining with a reduced unemployment rate as the result.
FAIL.
Got a link?
You might want to check this out: Missing 5.4 million Workers http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2843994/posts
Wait for the general election when the GOP candidate is running against Obama. If they don'y use the ammo then, then you have a complaint.
The data came out last week. Go here for the gov’t release:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
Search on - BLS census 2012 employment - for plain English explanations. Such as here:
http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/getting-it-wrong-bls-employment-report
There is no doubt that Barky’s disastrous economic policies are destroying jobs and making people leave the work force. But there also is no doubt that it didn’t happen to 1.2 million folk last month.
This was a once-a-decade fudge factor.
Monthly corrections happen, well, monthly. So yes, the January numbers will be revised next month, just as December’s were this month.
see post 13
Your Economic Populist article is responding to the first article from Zero Hedge. If memory serves, there is a follow-up Zero Hedge article on the BLS stats written about a week later. Don’t have time to dig into it right now, but thanks for the sources.
For instance, they claim that "1 out of every 6 jobs created in the U.S. in the last six months was created in California".
Oddly, their collection of personal income tax revenues has dropped in the last four months, compared to the year before.
Maybe they're not collecting personal income tax for newly hired workers? **snicker**
CA might well have 1 out of 6 jobs created... but doesn’t mean that it’s enough to offset other jobs lost! Or all the tech companies now slowly setting up shop in Seattle away from Silicon Valley...
I think California is putting up phony employment & unemployment numbers to help The Won win the 2012 election.
They're not collecting enough personal income tax to support the employment claims.
The Chicago quid pro quo is for him to bail them out after the election.
Reality Check: Multiple Experts find the official unemployment rate is missing a whole lot of unemployed people --
http://biggovernment.com/waysandmeans/2012/02/08/reality-check-multiple-experts-find-the-official-unemployment-rate-is-missing-a-whole-lot-of-unemployed-people/
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