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Posted on 10/24/2011 4:53:50 PM PDT by VU4G10
closer look at the Department of Labor’s employment report earlier this month reveals that the real unemployment number is different from the “headline” number. Restated, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) should have concluded that unemployment is at least 9.1 percent, and most certainly much higher.
If the BLS adds the 9.3 million who are “involuntarily” employed part time because their hours were cut back or because they couldn’t find a full-time job, that brings the total to 23.3 million un- (or under) employed. Another 2.5 million persons were “marginally attached” to the labor force — those who were not working, but wanted to work and had tried to find work in the past year without success — which brings the total to 25.8 million. According to the BLS, the civilian work force is just over 154 million, so doing the math give a potentially more accurate number: 16.8 percent.
If those who have given up looking for work altogether were counted, that would add more than another nine million, according to John Williams at ShadowStats.com. That brings the unemployment number to 23 percent. This is confirmed by a recent Gallup poll that nearly one in every five Americans describe themselves as underemployed but it doesn’t count those who hold more than one job just to make ends meet.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenewamerican.com ...
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I’m gonna guess the rate is more like 35 or even 40%. Whatever, 9% isn’t even close to the real number.
From Zero Hedge: an economist using SGS data for inflation.
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000052988
The charts are here: http://confoundedinterest.wordpress.com/
Only posting now because I am in California and just got home from work. Sorry if posted by someone else already.
I would like to know what percentage of working adults, male or female, are earning enough to support a family of four at even a minimum standard without any assistance from family, government or anyone else. At one time any man with an eighth grade education could do this.
I recently came home rattled from lay offs at work, but still employed. My eight year old daughter asked what was wrong. I simply said, “My boss is firing people today.”
She started jumping up and down. “You’ll be able to stay at home with me like Angelina’s mom now does with her and Kate’s mom and ...” she rattled off two more moms.
In a discussion the next day after school, I asked two of the women about it.
The response: “it’s easier to say I’m a stay at home mom than say I’m unemployed”.
If a Republican is elected President the press will get off their collective butts and find the real number - and put it on the front page.
If Obama's reelected it'll be years before the truth comes out...
Earlier this year on local radio late at night I heard a state official say the unemployment rate here in California is twenty percent.
Stunned silence from the host who changed the subject. Nobody else picked up the story.
I haven’t heard that guy on the radio since.
Thanks for the link.
This is really frightening:
http://confoundedinterest.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/realsswageindex.png
But that was when income tax was nearly non-existent. Today the spouse needs to work just to cover the taxes.
Blue Ink
I’m originally from SoCal & had to move to Texas to save my job.
What state official was it, did you catch his name?
What late night talk show host was it?
...20% egads...
The BLS also DOES NOT include those who drop off the unemployment rolls each month due to the exhaution of their benefits ...
It is between 200K-400K ...
Unemployment——23%
inflation-———11%
Isn’t that special!
True dat. As of 10/3 it hit 100% at my housem and I'm a survivor of the Dot Com Bust, the 9-11 slump, and the Recession of 2008-2009. The numbers of Wall Street may not show it, by this canary in the coal mine is telling you point blank: this present economy is the worst in a decade, ans the principle driver behind it is the Obama Administration and his cronies in Congress.
Highlander,
Sorry you had to move to keep working. Pretty common California story these days...
I’ve since forgotten the guy’s name. Pretty sure the host was the late-night guy on KABC.
I don’t have an actual number, but here’s a profile in reality:
I head a family of eight.
We’re in CA, in a 50 year old 1460sq. ft. house in a so-so neighborhood, in a nice-but-not-affluent suburb of S.F. To buy the house outright today would cost me about 3X my annual income.
The kids are stacked three-to-a-bedroom.
The single-car garage is the pantry/laundry room/tool shed.
We’ve been here 20 years, which is at least 15 years longer than we really wanted to be here.
We’ve added almost 500sq ft. to the house since we moved in.
The place is clean, comfortable, and the roof doesn’t leak. Still, I sometimes think a good coat of fire would be an improvement.
We still owe 80% of what we bought the place for in 1992.
Excluding my mortgage, I’m carrying less than $10k in debt.
Both of my vehicles are 1997 models, and my commuter car has almost 300k on the ticker. It’s working on windshield #4 and transmission #3. The other rig — the family van — is pushing 150k miles and enjoying the services of transmission #2.
There’s nothing in the kitty to replace either one.
Nobody in the house has a “Smart Phone.”
We’ve never bought a flat screen TV. Heck, we don;t even HAVE TV; the cable is for the broadband service and that’s IT.
There’s no surround sound system in the house.
The core of the “entertainment system” is a 25-year old REALISTIC STA-2500 receiver I bought in 1985. The Technics SBK-45 speakers, and the Technics SL-L25 linear tracking turntable are a year newer. Woo-hoo.
The last three desktop computers we got were hand-me-downs from others.
Our most extravagant technology purchase in the last five years was an $800 laptop.
With the exception of my pillow-top queen bed and the nice frame from Benecia Forge, we never buy new furniture for the house. Nothing matches anything else we own. Everything is in decent shape, but it’s all second hand.
My kids wear basic clothes, mostly traded with other families we know whose kids have outgrown them.
Everyone has clothes that are neat, clean, and in good condition, but a “fashion trend” is an utterly foreign concept.
A couple of months ago we really splurged and bought two NEW pairs of jeans for my son at COSTCO when they were on sale.
Nobody in our house has been to the mall in months and months, and it’s only 3 miles away. It could burn to the ground and we might not find out for weeks.
My wife hasn’t had her hair done in a decade.
We dine out maybe once every five to seven weeks; mostly at local coffee shops, or our favorite store-front diner. In any case, we’ve NEVER topped $100 taking the family out for dinner.
We rarely have steak in the house; we’ve never had lobster, and salmon or trout are rarities.
We eat simple, dress simple, and live simple. There’s no frills, no fads, no bling, no “gravy” and almost no money come the month’s end.
______________
Now, compare that with this picture from thirty years ago:
I was in a family of four.
We were in a brand-new, 2000sq. ft. house in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, in a very desirable suburb of S.F. The house cost us about 3X my father’s annual salary.
I had my own room. If we’d have had four more siblings, we’d have still only been two-to-a-bedroom.
The two-car garage was — wonder of wonders — a garage.
Excluding the mortgage, the family carried no debt.
Both of our family vehicles were less than five years old, and still running happily on their original transmissions.
Had either transmission threatened failure we could have replaced either vehicle.
We had a $1200 computer in the house. The leading edge of home computing technology in that day.
Almost none of our furniture was second-hand; the folks bought just about everything brand new.
We had good clothes all bought new. I never wore a hand-me down anything, and my younger brother didn’t end up with much of my old stuff; maybe a few pairs of jeans and the odd shirt or two.
We were at the mall about every other month buying something for someone in the house.
My mother had her hair done about once a month.
We went out to eat about every week or two; usually to Marie Callender’s, or Black Angus, or some other steak house. Denny’s? Fuhgedabouddit! Not unless we were on a road trip.
We had steak and fresh fish on a regular basis.
We eat well, dressed well, and lived well. While there were few frills, and we weren’t faddish, or into much flash, there was “gravy” and almost always a little money leftover come the month’s end.
That was my house in 1981 on about a $40k income.
We can’t get anywhere close to living like that today on twice the money.
The brand new house from back then would cost me upward of 8X my annual income if I were to try and buy it today, and THAT’S the underlying problem: what my father could get for 3X his salary thirty years ago would cost me 8X or 9X my annual salary now, and that’s with me more than doubling what he made then!
Who can realistically afford to do that?!
Then throw taxation, and regulation on top of it all?!
I had a really good standard of living when I was a kid.
I live just a wee bit above “minimum” today, and it’s costing twice as much money just to hold the line on that, and NOTHING Obama and his damned cronies have done has helped; EVERYTHING they’ve done has made it harder.
I make about 45K a year. My husband makes 38K a year. We live in NYS so about half of that goes to taxes. My husband also pays child support for his three kids. His weekly take home then becomes $200. He has a company HVAC truck. I have a total of three vehicles; two ford F150s 1995 and 1997, paid for of course. One is used exclusively for hauling wood and snow plowing. We invested in 4 studded snow tires last year. I have a 2000 dodge neon, paid for and hubby and I do all the repairs on the house, car you name it.
I was lucky to get a job last year that was about a 15-18 min commute one way; down from 45-60 min one way. I fix computers for a living so I have to have internet at home (VPN for on call plus “side” work). DSL for $67 a month. No landline other than the one to host the DSL. I did splurge and get NFL Sunday Ticket this year for him on Direct TV, but was able to talk down the price and sacrifice a few of “my” channels (investigation type stuff)
We go to the local “pick and pull” junk yard for any car/truck parts we need. We eat in restaurants maybe once in six months. I make all our bread, pretty much 99% of all food from scratch and freeze. We don’t have a furnace b/c we heat with two wood stoves. Living on a government declared but unbeknownst to us upon sale “wetland” gives us plenty of free wood to burn (until the DEC eventually outlaws wood burning stoves)
I’d like to get a wind turbine to get off the grid as well. All our clothes come from thrift stores like the VOA, except for unmentionables. We cut our own hair. Everything else I buy with a “made in the USA” label if possible. I have a large garden and can, freeze and dry. I have a very large chest freezer stocked up with sales.
We are not “legally” married but have lived together for over 8 years, mostly due to his ex-wife and child support situation (in NYS they will count the non custodial spouse’s income but NOT the custodial spouse’s income, which, by the way is WAY higher than both of our salaries put together; his ex makes as much as i do) I have health insurance, but my “hubby” does not. The house we live in is a gut rehab so practically all our income gets thrown at our once 900 sq ft but now 1800 sq feet home (we put on an addition ourselves)
If you drive about 15 minutes in a southeasternly direction, you’ll see all the “poor” people receiving SSI and “temporary” assistance, HEAP, WIC, SNAP, Section 8, charity baskets, Medicaid, in their leather coats, bling, nails and hair done holding their iphones with custom kanye west ring tones as they walk back into their modern apartments with their $200 sneakers; checking out their giant flat screen TVs and surround sound with cable and all the premium channels; staring out at the parking lot in which their Beamer resides.
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