Posted on 02/21/2012 10:09:37 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
How would you define “unemployment?” Statistics on unemployment are bandied around in the media all the time. Changes in these statistics are hailed as good or bad news for the President, with varying degrees of emphasis from the news networks, depending on which party the President belongs to. But what do these statistics truly measure?
Would you define “unemployment” as measuring “people who want a job, but can’t get one?” This is, broadly speaking, the definition embraced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The trick to making those numbers dance lies in measuring “people who want a job.” The widely reported U-3 unemployment metric, currently standing at 8.3 percent, is very aggressive in shaving off people who have not made recent efforts to find work. It is further distorted by massive “seasonal adjustments,” which made over a million people vanish into thin air last month.
This is why the official unemployment rate gets lower when the American workforce contracts. Workforce contraction is a very bad thing. People who simply cannot find work, and languish on unemployment insurance for years, are the last thing a prosperous country needs… but those people don’t count in the official unemployment rate. For example, if everyone under the age of 25 abruptly stopped looking for work, it would be an economic disaster, but the official unemployment rate would go down, because the pool of people looking for work would get smaller.
(That’s not quite as far-fetched an example as it might sound, incidentally. Even the heavily-massaged U-3 unemployment rate currently sits at 23.2 percent for ages 16-19, and 13.3 percent for ages 20-24… and it’s about two percent higher for young men...
(Excerpt) Read more at humanevents.com ...
PING!
Most of these rules of measuring unemployment date back to the 1930s and the sample of unemployed workers they take is so small.
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/what-is-unemployment
My hunch is that number is close to accurate.
It’s difficult to know, as the labor reports vary widely and feels like listening to a Tokyo Rose broadcast.
When in truth its just as bad or worse than the 30’s.
That’s right.
0bama blamed President Bush for an Unemployment rate of 6% back in 2008 and now 0bama has given us an Unemployment rare of 36%.
The 2012 Republican campaign needs to be built around the simple fact.
Bush 6% Unemployment.
0bama 36% Unemployment.
Good article, but even he adopts the language of the fraudsters.
The statisticians have no way of knowing you aren't trying to find work, and they have no way of knowing you have "dropped out of the work force". All they know is your unemployment benefits ran out.
If you aren't receiving unemployment, you aren't counted. If you graduate from school, and can't find work, but you don't qualify for unemployment, you aren't counted. If you are off work and living off your savings, you aren't counted. If you're out of work but your folks or your brother in law is supporting you, you aren't counted. If you are out of work camped down by the river eating beans you picked up at the local food bank, you aren't counted.
Being out of work no longer qualifies you to be counted as "out of work". The qualifier is "out of work less than a year, receiving a state check".
So, yes. The government statistic is fraudulent, and has never been more fraudulent than it is now. The real number is probably in the thirties. Everyone in America knows someone out of work and most people are helping to support an out-of-work family member. Hardly a family in America is untouched.
If the same methodology that says current unemployment is 8.5% was used during the great depression it would have shown very low levels of unemployment.
The methodology being used today simply covers up the fact that we are in a very very very severe recession that may end up being a depression.
mark
We are in an economic depression. Almost 50 million on food stamps. Hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homes and shuttered businesses not to mention the 20+ million manufacturing jobs lost to outsourcing over the last decade. Extended unemployment benefits. Exploding social security disability recipients. 46% of the population not paying taxes. Declining household income for the last decade. 1% return on CD savings decimating retirement for millions of seniors. Escalating food, medical and energy costs further depressing incomes of the middle class and fixed income retires. Not only is it an economic depression, it is a psychological depression in which the producer segment of the population is losing hope and belief in the American dream is non existent in many segments of society.
That's ridiculous. Recalculate unemployment under Bush the way they did it here for Obama and the rate was about 15%.
All good points, but I wonder if a sizeable chunk of that 36% cited in this article are actually “out of work” for a perfectly legitimate reason: they’re retired.
Wow! That’s a lot of smoke you posted!
Bush 6% Unemployment....I think if you go back to certain periods during W’s 8 years, you’ll find 4.3% unemployment.
For a variety of reasons, that group is going to continue to grow almost regardless of what the overall economy does.
When I came home haggard one day, my husband asked me what was wrong. I said they’d had cut backs, a dozen laid off in my group. My nine year old daughter became bizarrely excited. I asked her why.
“Now you can stay home with me like Kate’s mom and Angelina’s mom and Ali’s mom!”
Later talking to her classmates, all three USED to work at middle class pay rates but now call themselves stay at home moms because there is less stigma than “unemployed 1 year, 2 years, three years”. One even had a baby to fill in the gap and free time.
When I came home haggard one day, my husband asked me what was wrong. I said they’d had cut backs, a dozen laid off in my group. My nine year old daughter became bizarrely excited. I asked her why.
“Now you can stay home with me like Kate’s mom and Angelina’s mom and Ali’s mom!”
Later talking to her classmates mothers, all three USED to work at middle class pay rates but now call themselves stay at home moms because there is less stigma than “unemployed 1 year, 2 years, three years”. One even had a baby to fill in the gap and free time.
This is all part of the plan and the communist/socialist types have been working the plan for a long time. Communism can not be implemented unless the citizens are hurting bad, abject misery, therefore we must be impoverished, unemployed and with no way out.
Taxes on business and industry where implemented and then raised causing them to leave this nation with our wealth and jobs. Restrictions where placed on extracting our natural resources and more taxes where implemented and again raised. the result was spending our wealth buying oil and metals from others. This is leading us down the garden path to accepting their utopia.
When we quit taxing business and industry, the corporations will move back because “WE” are the most productive workers in the world. When we extract our own oil and metals, we retain our wealth instead of sending it overseas. When we do these things we will be on the road to recovery. When we do these things the communists/socialists will fight us tooth and nail and remember to them lie, cheat, steal and murder are OK as long as it furthers their agenda.
Now some feedback please, tell me I’m wrong
Then you really think that unemployment is down to 8.3%?
What do you smoke?
What’s your evaluation?
Statistics obscure the truth from us, but the unemployed themselves know who they are. The question is, how will they respond in November?
You are partially correct.
However, many business will still pursue the cheapest labor in the form of guest workers and neo-slaves in third world countries without any consideration to patriotism and morality.
I said nothing about 8.3% any where. In other posts I said the true unadulterated figure is 39%. I did say, and will stand by it, that at times during the BUSH administration it went down to 4.3% and they didn’t play with the figures too much because there is no need to once you get to 6%.
The underfunding of SS scam needs to be factored into the unemployment score.
Really? How many people you know have been layed off and can’t find full time work?
Whether it’s out west, in the midlands, or New England people are out of work and this administration keeps upping the ante by extending unemployment payments. Who’s paying for all this? It certainly isn’t the government. It’s we the people.
And I agreed with you making the point that in reality, no matter what the the Obama administration has been telling us, we are in a deep DEPRESSION just as bad as the one our parents and grandparents suffered during the 1930’s.
Yes, unemployment is truly higher than what the BLS is telling us. The figure you quoted at 39% is high but not unrealistic.
And I agreed with you making the point that in reality, no matter what the the Obama administration has been telling us, we are in a deep DEPRESSION just as bad as the one our parents and grandparents suffered during the 1930’s.
Yes, unemployment is truly higher than what the BLS is telling us. The figure you quoted at 39% is high but not unrealistic.
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