Free Republic

Mick Mulvaney told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday that he has long thought the previous administration framed data to make the unemployment rate "look smaller than it actually was." "What you should really look at is the number of jobs created," Mulvaney said on "State of the Union." "We've thought for a long time, I did, that the Obama administration was manipulating the numbers, in terms of the number of people in the workforce, to make the unemployment rate -- that percentage rate -- look smaller than it actually was."

The number of Americans not in the labor force last month totaled 94,044,000, 562,000 more than in March -- and the labor force participation rate dropped to 62.8 percent (near a 38-year low), following four straight months of slight improvement. When President Obama took office in Janaury 2009, the labor force partipation rate was 65.7 percent, after hovering in the 66-67 percent range for much of the George W. Bush presidency. The recession inherited by the Obama administration officially ended in June 2009, but the labor force participation rate continued to drop during Obama's two terms, hitting 62.4 percent in...

Hiding The Unemployed: Disability And The Politics Of Stats Wendy McElroyApril 26, 2013 Some statistics cannot be understood without being set within a political framework, because they reflect politics as much as, or more than, they do reality. The unemployment rate is an example and a cautionary tale. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the seasonally adjusted official unemployment rate for February fell to a four-year national low of 7.7%. While the White House cautiously congratulated itself, Republicans quickly pointed to what is often called the real unemployment rate; it stood at 14.3%.The BLS looks at six categories...

Arends: Forget the Labor Department's jobs numbers. For a true picture of the bleak employment picture, use the Guy Rate. ~snip~ There are many reasons to distrust the unemployment figures. The most obvious is that those who give up looking for work no longer count among the official "unemployment." (Extraordinary, but true.) But we know Ben Bernanke looks at the raw data. What is he seeing? ~snip~ As you can see -- and as Ben Bernanke surely sees -- the picture remains grim. Just 75% of these guys are in full-time work -- or, to put it another way, one...

At what point can one call the chart below parabolic? What can we say but BTFD, if you see one. And just in case we are accussed of distorting demographic data, here is the same chart indexed at 100% compared to the change in the total population. Demographic crunch anyone?

Airing right now...said the real unemployment is at 17.5%...showing tons of people with masters, bachelors, phd's, you name it...unemployed for 2 years...can't even get jobs at Target.