Free Republic

I have to credit our own Mike Shedlock for writing about how Obama’s been able to drive down the topline unemployment number even though unemployment remains as a big problem today as it has ever been. I’m often reluctant to piggy back on a contributor’s work, but when something is really newsworthy, I think it’s justified. Yesterday Mish pointed out that:In the last year, the civilian population rose by 3,638,000. Yet the labor force only rose by 945,000. Those not in the labor force rose by 2,693,000. In the last month, actual employment fell by 169,000, but the unemployment rate...

Since mid-2010, precisely at the time millions of US citizens used up all of their 99 week of unemployment insurance, disability claims have risen by 2.2 million. Those on disability are not counted in the workforce and are not considered unemployed. Please consider Disabled Americans Shrink Size of U.S. Labor Force

If the same percentage of adults were in the workforce today as when Barack Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be 11.1 percent. If the percentage was where it was when George W. Bush took office, the unemployment rate would be 13.1 percent. That helps explain a seeming contradiction in the unemployment numbers — the rate keeps dropping even though job creation has been soft. In April, the U.S. economy added a mere 115,000 jobs, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday. In a normal month, that would not even be enough to keep up with new...