Posted on 09/10/2012 12:52:50 PM PDT by Innovative
His (Obama's) stubborn insistence that government - and not small business - is the way to grow jobs and the economy has always been wrong. That he keeps insisting, with 88.9 million Americans out of work, has become morally unacceptable.
The early news coverage Friday reported that the unemployment rate fell from 8.3 to 8.1 percent, with headlines suggesting it wasn't all that bad, maybe even a slight positive for the president.
It wasn't all that bad. It was worse.
The reason the unemployment fell to 8.1 percent was that 368,000 Americans had given up looking for work, bringing the total number of those not in the labor force to 88.9 million people. So the 8.1 percent figure would have been higher if those 368,800 hadn't finally quit on finding a job.
If you count Americans both unemployed and underemployed, the statistic is 14.7 percent. That's the one that should be used in news accounts and referred to by Americans. Because it's the number that explains the real anguish of people who are slowly being broken.
And even that percentage is an understatement, since it doesn't include the millions who have simply given up.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
88.9 million people out of work... Did you know that is more than the entire population of the USA in the year 1900!!!
“what percentage of Americans are unemployed”? Seems like such a simple question. The answer cited most regularly - tbe unemployment percentage - is the worst farce statistic thrown around in all of politics. It counts a person finishing their 99th (!) week on unemployment the same as if they had gotten a job!
A better way to answer the question “what percentage of Americans are unemployed” would be to say “if we extended unemployment benefits forever, what percentage of people would be eligible to receive them”?
I suspect that number is closer to 13-14%. Which is why it’s not calculated that way....
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