Posted on 12/02/2011 7:30:23 AM PST by libertarian neocon
Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the employment report for November, which showed that our unemployment rate hit 8.6%, the "lowest" since March of 2009. As I've mentioned before, the unemployment rate that is printed today is not comparable to the unemployment rates of even a couple of years ago thanks to the "labor participation rate" falling off since November 2008:
As you can see, the labor force participation rate is about 2% lower than it was thanks to people no longer being counted as being part of the labor force. This artificially lowers the unemployment rate, as well as U-6 which counts the underemployed (currently at 15.6%). I guess this is one way Obama can solve the unemployment problem, if he kicks all the unemployed out of the labor force, unemployment would technically be 0% statistically (that tells you how much you can trust statistics to tell you how well we are doing).
So how does the unemployment rate look if you keep it steady at 66%? Take a look at this graph where the red line is the published unemployment number and the blue line takes into account those kicked out of the labor force number:
Not very pretty is it? It also tells a very different story which is that unemployment peaked in October 2009 at 10.1% and has been falling ever since. According to this calculation, our peak unemployment was actually in July of 2011 at 11.9%!
Anyway, here is an official statistic which pretty much corroborates my story,the employment to population ratio. Basically, it's the percent of people over the age of 16 who are currently working. That number also only bottomed in July:
So if you feel that the economy still seems really bad, despite official statistics looking good, there's a reason. You're right!
One would have to be deaf, dumb and blind to believe that figure.
IOW, a liberal.
Put me down for 7.6%. They have to make it somewhat believable for the proles.
“Also, if you add back the 315,000 people who dropped out of the labor force from last month to the total labor force and to the unemployed, then unemployment is at 8.8% from last month.”
Yup, though the labor participation rate was only 64.2% last month.
Ya think?
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
You’re right, I did look at the wrong column and once I posted it I realized it but couldn’t take my post back. Either way, 315,000 people dropping out of the work force is not good. Fewer people are in the work force today than in November 2010.
O like to cook the books to make himself feel better. Who are you gonna believe me or your lying eyes??
America’s schools have churned out a critical mass of Junior Marxists - many of them around age 30 and working for the federal government making up statistics out of whole cloth.
“You’re right, I did look at the wrong column and once I posted it I realized it but couldn’t take my post back. Either way, 315,000 people dropping out of the work force is not good. Fewer people are in the work force today than in November 2010.”
Yeah I wish there were a way to edit posts too.
Yup, the numbers are horrible. Also in terms of the size of the labor force, it is smaller now than in June of 2008 despite the fact that we have 7 million more people!
I went a dug around some more numbers from the dept of labor. Not since WWII has the labor force ever shrunk except under the Obama Admin. Didn’t shrink under Bush. And from the time Bush took office in 2001 until the end of 2008 the total number of people working had increased by 8.5 million.
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