Posted on 12/02/2011 4:55:52 PM PST by Kaslin
Jobs: Americans woke up Friday to the good news that the unemployment rate had dropped sharply from 9% to 8.6%. On closer inspection, the decline is highly questionable — and doesn't warrant a surge in optimism.
The White House hailed the news as "further evidence that the economy is continuing to health" and proving the $447 billion stimulus proposal "is the right medicine" for what ails us. Some in the media likewise saw good news, with headlines such as the Boston Globe's "Unemployment Drops To Lowest Since 2009."
We're not trying to be Grinches, but the decline in the unemployment rate is highly suspect for many reasons.
The number is derived from a huge survey of 60,000 households the government takes each month. In November, the survey showed the labor force shrank by 315,000. That shrinkage makes the unemployment rate look a lot better than it is.
This is questionable because in the previous three months, the labor force increased by 323,000 workers on average. Statistically, a one-month reversal in the size of the workforce of more than 600,000 people just doesn't make sense — unless an awful lot of people threw up their hands in disgust and quit looking.
And that's what seems to be the case. The labor participation rate declined to 64% from 64.2% a month before. Usually, it rises when jobs are growing as people rejoin the labor force.
"Some of the decline relates to the aging of the U.S. population, but a substantial portion of the decline reflects the lack of well-paying jobs, and it (is) driving people from the labor force, discouraged," wrote economist Anthony Crescenzi of bond giant Pimco.
That is not good news.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
felt for sometime that if the number isnt outright cooked it is at least lightly sauteed by washington beaurocrats.
One in DC would more people leaving the job market than job created would be a victory!
From Zero Hedge:
A Closer Look at Unemployment: Did it REALLY Fall to 8.6%? More People Dropped Out of Labor Force Than Jobs Added AND … Wage Income Fell
http://confoundedinterest.wordpress.com/
The numbers are clearly cooked by 0bama regime and sauteed by the lamestream media(or the other way around)
Rate Tumbles to 8.6%
Riiiiiight..
And there are only 12 million illegal aliens in the U.S...
and 315,000 dropped out which most of the media are not reporting as per usual.
I didn’t see Mike Shedlock’s column in Townhall.com this morning. I wonder if Townhall.com dropped him? The last column he posted in Townhall.com was November 30
The ignorant left bought it hook line and sinker
If, by “statistical fluke”, you mean a “lie”, then yes. Yes it is.
Obama spent the last year complaining that the GOP was blocking his agenda. How can he take credit for these improvements now?
Cooked numbers, more like it. Wait for the actual adjusted number in a few weeks to get the real number.
In November, those "Not in Labor Force" rose by a whopping 487,000. If you are not in the labor force, you are not counted as unemployed. Were it not for people dropping out of the labor force, the unemployment rate would be well over 11%.
Beginning manifestations of what I call “The Soviet Winter.”
With Phony-Care, THE Workcamp.
At this rate it will be 4.2% by election day.
Not a statistical fluke, rather a BIG LIE.
Another thing to mention is that many of these new jobs are temporary positions filled to address the Holiday shopping season. Let’s see how things look in mid-January.
For those who may have forgotten...
At least 60,000 of those “new entrants” are LEGAL immigrants.
60,000 new citizens, new work visas, new Green Cards, each month.
What did they forget here?
The USA population is growing 1% per year.
In 2016 we’ll finally get back to the same number of jobs that we had in 2008.
But the USA population will have increased by 25 million!
Ed Yardeni on Bloomberg today said 8.5% at best by the end 2012.
...”315,000 dropped out which most of the media are not reporting as per usual.”
If the government counts 315,000 unemployed people as having fallen out of the workforce, are they also counting them as being unemployable? They’d like that, wouldn’t they.
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