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Aparna Mathur, Matthew H. Jensen | Tracking the unreported (15.6%) unemployed January 06, 2012 In case you missed it, AEI economist Aparna Mathur and economic researcher Matt Jensen find that: The official US unemployment rate hovers around 8.6 percent (8.5 % as of today), but a better measure of the real jobless rate is called the “U-6” which stands at 15.6 percent (15.2 percent as of today). The U-6 rate includes those that would still like a job and have looked for work in the last twelve months, not just the last four weeks. That means the number of Americans...

Report: Millions of jobless file for disability when unemployment benefits run outPublished February 19, 2012 | FoxNews.com Being unemployed for too long reportedly is driving people mad and costing taxpayers billions of dollars in mental illness and other disability claims. The New York Post reported Sunday that as unemployment checks run out, many jobless are trying to gain government benefits by declaring themselves unhealthy. More than 10.5 million people -- about 5.3 percent of the population aged 25 and 64 -- received disability checks in January from the federal government, the Post wrote, a 18 percent jump from before the...

Vice-President Joe Biden gives President Obama high grades when it comes to his handling of the economy. As he sees it, the bailouts and stimulus spending have been a “great success.” “Statistical nerds are saying that the economy has lost construction and manufacturing jobs since the President’s program was adopted, but I don’t know any of these people,” Biden said. “Everybody I know has a job. Why should I believe the numbers the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) trolls are reporting?” Biden admitted that “occasionally I’m approached by somebody who says he’s unemployed and would like some help. But how do...

Now that the unemployment rate seems to be on a steady decline, Republicans have begun rummaging around for less flattering economic indicators they can use to attack President Obama's jobs record during this election year. To mark today's three-year anniversary of the stimulus, the uber-conservative Republican Study Committee blasted out a graph (above) mapping the decline of America's workforce participation rate, which measures the overall percentage of working-age adults who have a job or are searching for one.

It's not the same as the unemployment rate. It is the workplace participation rate that shows the true horror of Obama's jobless "recovery."Quite simply, the percentage of working-age Americans who have a job is crashing. Daily Caller: A new chart produced by the Republican Study Committee shows the downward jumps of that job-participation rate, even after President Barack Obama deployed his trillion-dollar stimulus in February 2009, and after Obama declared the summer of 2010 a "Recovery Summer.""I expect you will be seeing this chart on the House floor during debates, it will be shown at town hall meetings and...

Without any fanfare whatsoever from the White House, February 17 marks the three-year anniversary of the day President Obama signed the much ballyhooed stimulus into law. At the time, Obama claimed that it would "create or save" up to 3.5 million jobs, and that "a new wave of innovation, activity and construction will be unleashed across America." The stimulus, would, he promised "ignite spending by businesses and consumers" and bring "real and lasting change for generations to come." So three years later, how do the stimulus results stack up?

After three years with unemployment topping 8 percent, the U.S. has seen the longest period of high unemployment since the Great Depression, the Congressional Budget Office noted in a report issued today. And, despite some recent good news on the economic front, the CBO is still predicting that unemployment will remain above 8 percent until 2014. The report also notes that, including those who haven't sought work in the past four weeks and those who are working part-time but seeking full-time employment, the unemployment rate would be 15 percent.

The Congressional Budget Office released a report Thursday that showed real unemployment in America at 15 percent for the month of January, a figure considerably higher than the White House’s oft-cited 8.3 percent figure that does not include part-time workers seeking full-time work or those who have given up hope of finding a job altogether. From the CBO: Many people would like to work but have not searched for a job in the past four weeks, or are working part-time but would prefer full-time work. If those people were counted among the unemployed, the unemployment rate in January 2012 would...

The market's up, Real GDP was up 2.8% in the fourth quarter of 2011 and unemployment is down to 8.3%, you should be happy as the economy seems to be finally getting out of its slump.  Instead, you, as they did in Star Wars, "have a bad feeling about this".  Well, there is good reason for this as the economy is nowhere near as good as the headline statistics are saying and some are showing that it's getting worse. The Bureau of Economic Analysis itself admitted that over 1.9% of the 2.8% growth we saw in the 4th quarter came...

After three years with unemployment topping 8 percent, the U.S. has seen the longest period of high unemployment since the Great Depression, the Congressional Budget Office noted in a report issued today. And, despite some recent good news on the economic front, the CBO is still predicting that unemployment will remain above 8 percent until 2014. The report also notes that, including those who haven't sought work in the past four weeks and those who are working part-time but seeking full-time employment, the unemployment rate would be 15 percent.

House and Senate negotiators have released a conference committee report spelling out several of the provisions of the payroll tax cut extension legislation, which also extends unemployment benefits and the “doc fix” for Medicare reimbursements for physicians. The bill would extend the 2 percentage point cut in Social Security and Medicare withholding taxes to 4.2 percent through the end of the year. The payroll tax cut provision would put a full $1,000 in the pockets of the typical American family over the course of 2012, according to the office of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont. Under current law,...

Relieved congressional bargainers say they've reached agreement on compromise legislation extending payroll tax cuts and benefits for the long-term unemployed through 2012, edging a white-hot political battle a major step closer to finally being resolved. Rep. David Camp, R-Mich., and Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the two top negotiators, strode from a conference room minutes after midnight Thursday to say that only technical issues and the drafting of legislative language remained. The bill would assure a continued tax cut for 160 million workers and jobless benefits for several million others, delivering top election-year priorities for President Barack Obama. "It's a very...

America’s youth vote, which turned out in record numbers in 2008 and gave a historically high percentage of their support to President Obama, has soured on him because they are having a hard time finding work and, as a result, are putting off major decisions like getting married and starting a family Obama, who won 66 percent of the 24 million voters age 18-29 in 2008, has seen that support slashed. And in a new poll from Generation Opportunity, a nonprofit that seeks to engage younger voters, only 31 percent approve of Obama’s handling of youth unemployment, a number that...

Gallup, which unlike the BLS, does not fudge, Birth/Die, or seasonally adjust its data, has just released its most recent (un)employment data. And it’s not pretty: for all those hoping that the Labor Participation Rate fudge that managed to stun the world a few weeks ago with a major drop in the November jobless rate, don’t hold your breath. Gallup which constantly pools 30,000 people on a weekly basis, has found that for the past 4 weeks, both underemployment and unemployment have risen for 4 weeks in a row. And while the number of US workers “working part time and...

<p>The number of people seeking unemployment benefits fell to the lowest point in almost four years last week, the latest signal that the job market is steadily improving.</p> <p>The Labor Department said that weekly applications for unemployment benefits dropped 13,000 to a seasonally adjusted 348,000. It was the fourth drop in five weeks and the fewest number of claims since March 2008.</p>

Unemployed Americans who started businesses last year was the lowest in at least a quarter-century. In 2011, 3.3% of out-of-work Americans started businesses, compared to 4.7% in 2010. But recent start-up activity is anemic compared to 1989 when 20.3% of unemployed were starting businesses. Until 1997, start-up activity was typically in double digits. “Basically, it was not a very inviting environment for would-be entrepreneurs,” said John A. Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “While big business definitely began to reap the benefits of the recovery in 2011, conditions were not nearly as fruitful for existing small business, let along...

Gallup polled small-business owners (value under $20M) about their expansion plans in early January, which for some strange reason didn’t get reported until today. Among those who do not plan to hire — 85% of the entire sample — almost half of all such businesses cited expected costs from health care coverage and government regulation: U.S. small-business owners who aren’t hiring — 85% of those surveyed — are most likely to say the reasons they are not doing so include not needing additional employees; worries about weak business conditions, including revenues; cash flow; and the overall U.S. economy. Additionally, nearly...

Gallup released new information on Monday showing that the unemployment rate has managed to creep back up to 9.0 percent. Gallup gathers daily unemployment information of U.S. adults in the workforce, ages 18 and older, who are underemployed, unemployed, and employed full-time for an employer. However, unlike the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report that the administration cites, Gallup's data are raw numbers numbers and not packaged with seasonal adjustments. With seasonal adjustments, BLS shows the unemployment rate at 8.3 percent. Gallup also shows the underemployment rate is at 19.2%.

PRINCETON, NJ -- U.S. small-business owners who aren't hiring -- 85% of those surveyed -- are most likely to say the reasons they are not doing so include not needing additional employees; worries about weak business conditions, including revenues; cash flow; and the overall U.S. economy. Additionally, nearly half of small-business owners point to potential healthcare costs (48%) and government regulations (46%) as reasons. One in four are not hiring because they worry they may not be in business in 12 months. Companies typically hold back on hiring when the economy is weak and when their operating environment is not...

President Barack Obama will return to Wisconsin for the first time in more than a year tomorrow. Last month in his State of the Union Address, Obama highlighted Milwaukee padlock manufacturer Master Lock bringing 100 jobs back from China. The company is now preparing for the President to see its work first hand. “I'm really excited,” said John Heppner, Master Lock’s CEO. “We're all really excited. This is great for our employees and for our community.”

In this morning's Cashin's Comments, Art Cashin points to some disturbing research regarding the recent bump in disability benefit applications:I’m Sick Of Being Unemployed - A couple of strange and rather disquieting reports circulated among the Friends of Fermentation yesterday.  The topic was unemployment or, more specifically, where do those people go who have stopped looking for work.  Their absence is credited with distorting the unemployment rate and making it lower than most expect or believe.The reports I allude to, contended that many went on disability.  In fact, they projected that nearly 25% of those not actively seeking a job...

In the United States today, unemployment among those age 18 to age 34 is at epidemic levels and the number of young adults that are now living at home with Mom and Dad is at an all-time high. So why are so many of our young adults jobless? Why are record numbers of them unable or unwilling to move out on their own? Well, there are quite a few factors at work. Number one, our education system has completely and totally failed them. As I have written about previously, our education system is a joke and most high school...

In the United States today, unemployment among those age 18 to age 34 is at epidemic levels and the number of young adults that are now living at home with Mom and Dad is at an all-time high. So why are so many of our young adults jobless? Why are record numbers of them unable or unwilling to move out on their own? Well, there are quite a few factors at work. Number one, our education system has completely and totally failed them. As I have written about previously, our education system is a joke and most high school...

ART CASHIN: The Unemployed Are Now Going On Disability And It's Costing The Government Billions Sam RoFebuary 14, 2012 In this morning's Cashin's Comments, Art Cashin points to some disturbing research regarding the recent bump in disability benefit applications: I’m Sick Of Being Unemployed - A couple of strange and rather disquieting reports circulated among the Friends of Fermentation yesterday. The topic was unemployment or, more specifically, where do those people go who have stopped looking for work. Their absence is credited with distorting the unemployment rate and making it lower than most expect or believe. The reports I allude...

WASHINGTON — General Electric Co. plans to hire 5,000 veterans over the next five years and invest $580 million to expand its aviation business. The announcements Monday were part of a four-day event that the global conglomerate is hosting with partners in Washington, D.C., that focuses on issues such as manufacturing and job creation in America. GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt heads up President Obama's 27-member jobs council, which also includes AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, AOL co-founder Steve Case and Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. GE said Monday that its "Hiring Our Heroes" partnership will help match veterans with jobs....

by John Hill Stand With Arizona Kris Kobach, architect of Arizona's landmark S.B. 1070 and Kansas Secretary of State, brought needed common sense to the CPAC Conference discussion on immigration. Following remarks by Alex Nowrasteh, a policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in which he denounced E-Verify and claimed - to boos from the audience - that "free market conservatives" should allow employers to hire illegal aliens (see synopsis here), it was Kobach's turn to restore sanity. First Mr. Kobach laid out the concept of "attrition through enforcement" with a simple analogy. He then laid out how Arizona and...

Three West Virginia coal plants just announced they will close this year. Metro News reported: Ohio based FirstEnergy Corporation announces it will close three coal fired power plants in West Virginia by this fall. The closings come directly from the impact of new federal EPA regulations. The plants to close are Albright Power Station, Willow Island Power Station, and the Rivesville Power Station. The company says 105 employees will be directly impacted. The three plants produce 660 megawatts and about 3-percent of FirstEnergy’s total generation. In recent years, the plants served as “peaking facilities” and generated power during times of...

When Barack Obama entered office in January, 2009, the labor force participation rate was 65.7%, meaning nearly two-thirds of working age Americans were working or looking for work. When the recession supposedly officially ended in June, 2009, the labor force participation rate was still 65.7%. In the latest, much celebrated, unemployment report, the labor force participation rate had plummeted to 63.7%, the most rapid decline in U.S. history. That means that under President Obama nearly 5 million Americans have fled the workforce in hopeless despair. The trick is that when those 5 million are not counted as in the work...

The Great, Obama Unemployment Rate Scam *February 9, 2012 | By BoomerJeff * Political communication in America is largely an effort to influence the perceptions of those who pay little attention to politics by stripping complex concepts and issues down to easily understood statistics and simplistic soundbites. In each of his first 33 months in office President Obama suffered because the easily understood Unemployment Rate remained very high. But over the past four months it fell from 9% to 8.3% and Obama and his media supporters are making the most of it. They tell us the economy has improved so...

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week, underscoring a firming of the labor market. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 358,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The four-week moving average for new claims, seen as a better measure of labor market trends, fell 11,000 to 366,250 - the lowest level since April 2008. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast new claims rising to 370,000. U.S. stock index futures slightly added to gains after the report, while Treasury debt prices eased. The dollar rose to a session...

WASHINGTON — Drawing on a string of improved economic data, advisers to President Obama have updated their forecasts in recent days and now project that the economy will create two million jobs this year, reducing the unemployment rate to about 8 percent by year’s end. Alan B. Krueger, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, confirmed the revised projection in an interview on Wednesday, saying that the forecast in the president’s annual budget, to be released on Monday, is already “stale and out of date.” The budget will project an average unemployment rate — the most important economic figure...

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...

<p>As searches dragged on, many just stopped looking. Now they aren’t even counted among the jobless.</p> <p>Jackson Julien looked for a fun job, then for anything. Finally, demoralization set in.</p> <p>Millions of Americans have vanished from the US labor force in the past three years, many of them so discouraged by long, fruitless job searches that they have given up looking for work, convinced that no employer wants them, according to a new study.</p>

It may come as a surprise that according to the federal government, an out-of-work person who put in an application at every place in town more than thirty days ago, who scours every available newspaper's want ads every morning, and who visits every job search website on the web with no luck is not counted as unemployed. Indeed, he would not be considered member of the labor force because he is not actively searching for a job. Each month, the media report unemployment figures for the previous month. Much attention is paid to these figures, and many public and private...

Sounds more like 2004 Obama campaigning against 2012 Obama.

One of President Obama's closest advisors said that the administration is heartened by the decline in Black unemployment but added that much more needs to be done to solve what has been a longstanding problem in communities of color. In an interview with BET.com, Valerie Jarrett said the administration is undertaking a wide and varied approach to lowering the high unemployment rate in the African-American community. Jarrett said that the Obama administration remained highly committed to a host of initiatives in areas ranging from education to tax policy in an effort to lower Black unemployment further. “We need to make...

Last week, the White House claimed that unemployment dropped for the fifth consecutive month to 8.3 percent — the lowest it has been in nearly three years — after adding 243,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But financial experts are saying the figures may have been manipulated — and that the significant drop in employment was because of the fact that the federal agency charged with computing key economic data has significantly decreased the number of Americans in the workforce. “If you hold the workforce participation rate constant over the past year, unemployment would be about 8.9...

Illusion Of Economic Recovery - Feelings And Facts Economics / US Economy Feb 07, 2012 - 07:17 AM By: James Quinn "There is no means of avoiding a final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as the final and total catastrophe of the currency involved." - Ludwig von Mises The last week has offered an amusing display of the difference between the cheerleading corporate mainstream media, lying Wall Street shills and the critical thinking analysts...

Paul Krugman Makes The Bull Case For The Economy In One Simple Paragraph Joe Weisenthal Febuary 6, 2012 Paul Krugman has a new column up with the dreary title: Things Are Not OK. The gist is simple enough: Despite the good employment report, things are still pretty horrible (in that we're very far from full employment) and yet because of the way politics are these days, there's a good chance that the good news will cause people to jump too fast towards austerity and monetary tightening. All that being said, this paragraph presents what is probably the clearest bull argument...

WASHINGTON (AP) — About 90 District of Columbia workers have been suspended and may be fired after officials determined they received unemployment checks while holding city jobs. The Washington Post reports Monday that another 60 former D.C. workers have cashed unemployment checks they were not entitled to. Lisa Mallory is director of the city's Department of Employment Services. She says the city has paid about $800,000 in unemployment benefits to working city employees since 2009 (http://wapo.st/yEm9Iw ). Mallory says some employees received as much as $20,000. Others received a few hundred dollars. The fraud is not complicated. Mallory says people...

ANALYSIS/OPINION: When it comes to the unemployment rate, it’s nice to be president. Sure, it wasn’t so nice for President Obama in October 2009, when the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics declared the rate was 10 percent. But exactly a year from Election Day 2012, the rate began a precipitous plunge, first to 8.9 percent, then the next month, to 8.7, then to 8.5. And just last week, the BLS said the rate had fallen all the way down to 8.3 percent. So, spectacular news for the president, yes? And fantastic news for America, right? Uh, yes. And absolutely no....

The January jobs report is out and it seems pretty strong, at least superficially. The unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent from 8.5 percent, the lowest rate since February 2009. And the economy added 243,000 jobs, the most since April 2011.But does anyone believe an "official" unemployment rate of 8.3 percent really gives an accurate picture of the U.S. labor market? Even though the unemployment rate fell, so did the labor force participation rate (as more Americans became discouraged and gave up looking for work). Here’s what that means:1. If the size of the U.S. labor force as a share...

Was Friday's "Employment Situation" report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) good news? Sure, if you live on Fantasy Island. Back here in America? Not so much. The BLS reported that the closely followed "headline" (U-3) unemployment rate fell to 8.3% in January. This represented a decline of 0.2 percentage points from the previous month's level and the lowest level since February 2009. So, why isn't this good news? The problem isn't just that the employment report wasn't good news, it's that the employment report wasn't even news. Rather, it was simply the latest monthly installment of the long-running...

With the election about two quarters away history tells us that Obama's fate might well be decided by the unemployment count. After all, no president has been reelected with unemployment higher than 7.3% since Franklin Roosevelt. Recently, the Obama administration has claimed progress in unemployment citing a decline in the unemployment number to 8.3%, the best in three years. Republicans counter that this apparent improvement is illusory because so many job seekers have dropped out of the census figures only because they have simply quit looking for work. Republicans say that the number of workers who have "dropped out" jiggers...

New numbers on the economy came out today, revealing some seemingly positive trends, such as a drop in the unemployment rate. One of these numbers is a major drop in black unemployment, from 15.8% to 13.6%, a huge jump. On the surface, it's good news. Allen West, however, isn't having it -- he thinks someone may have tampered with the figures. "Can someone tell me how employment in the black community has improved at a rate three times the national average in just a few months?? With numbers like today, urban communities should be well on their way to economic...

Signs Point To More Strong Jobs Growth: Expert (CBS News) There are indications the economy is getting stronger. The Labor Department said Friday 243,000 jobs were added last month, the largest gain since April of last year, and the unemployment rate fel to 8.3 percent, the lowest in three-years. The numbers, says Charles Schwab Chief Investment Strategist Liz Ann Sonders, are "pretty close to great. What was unique about this month relative to past months is there was not much you could follow (with the word 'but'). The sport has been the skeptics diving into each month's number and finding...

*“Mene, Mene, Tekel u-Pharsin” ~ Book of Daniel, Ch. 5 ** By: Larry Walker, Jr. *The writing's on the wall! The massive decline of new entrants to the civilian labor force, which is shown graphically in the chart above, directly impacts the unemployment rate, making the employment situation appear far better than it actually is. If the 9.3 million workers who have effectively dropped out of the labor force, since the end of 2008, were instead of being excluded, counted as unemployed, the real unemployment rate would be 13.5% instead of yesterday’s published rate of 8.3%. Even if only...

An 8.3% jobless rate?Some day, the government is going to put out a good economic report and I’ll be able to say, “Yeah, that really is a good report.” This isn’t that day. Everyone, of course, would be thrilled if 243,000 jobs were actually created in the month of January. Hallelujah! Remember, we are talking about the month when companies go into hibernation because of bad weather and temporary Christmas jobs end. Jobs aren’t created in January. They are lost. Yet there it is in the Labor Department release yesterday — “total non-farm payrolls rose by 243,000 in January and...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday that the official unemployment rate for January was 8.3%, down from 8.5% in December. There were also 243,000 net jobs added during the month of January. But what does this really mean? Let us explore how this is calculated. The BLS keeps track of six unemployment rates, which are defined as follows: U1: Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force. This rate is 4.9% for January 2012. U2: Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force. This...

Of course it's good news that 243,000 new jobs were created in January, shaving the unemployment rate to 8.3%. But thanks to massive policy errors by the White House, we're still way below where we should be. President Obama, speaking in Arlington, Va., immediately took credit for the bullish report, crowing that "altogether, we've added 3.7 million new jobs over the last 23 months." According to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the economy is just 0.7% above its previous high. Usually at this point in an expansion, it's 13.5% above the last peak. In other words, thanks...