Posted on 10/07/2015 7:15:45 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The federal government uses very carefully manipulated numbers to cover up the crushing economic depression that is going on in this nation. For the month of September, the federal government told us that 142,000 jobs were added to the economy. If that was actually true, that would barely be enough to keep up with population growth. Sadly, the truth is that the real numbers were actually far worse than that. The unadjusted numbers show that the U.S. economy actually lost 248,000 jobs in September and the government added more than a million Americans to the “not in the labor force” category. When I first saw that number I truly believed that it was inaccurate. But you can find the raw figures right here. According to the Obama administration, there are currently 7.9 million Americans that are “officially unemployed” and another 94.7 million working age Americans that are “not in the labor force”. That gives us a grand total of 102.6 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now.
That is not an economic recovery – that is an economic depression of an almost unbelievable magnitude.
This is something that my friend Mac Slavo pointed out the other day. I encourage you to read his analysis right here. If we measured unemployment the way that we did decades ago, we would all be talking about how similar Obama’s economy is to the Great Depression of the 1930s.
But instead we let the feds get away with feeding us this completely fraudulent “5.1 percent” unemployment number and most of us believe the mainstream media when they tell us that everything is just fine.
Well no, everything is not just fine. At this point, the labor force participation rate is the lowest that it has been since 1977. And the labor force participation rate for men is at the lowest level ever recorded. The only way that the federal government has been able to get the official unemployment rate to go down so much is by pretending that hundreds of thousands of Americans that have been unemployed for a very long time “leave the labor force” each month.
The chart posted below shows how our labor force participation rate has deteriorated since the year 2000. And in particular, the decline since Obama first entered the White House has been very striking. Does this look like a “healthy economy” to you?…
To me, the civilian employment-population ratio is a far more accurate measurement of the employment picture in America than the official unemployment rate is. Just prior to the last recession, approximately 63 percent of all working age Americans had a job. During that recession, that figure slipped below 59 percent and it stayed there for several years. Just recently it slipped back above 59 percent, but as you can see we are now falling once again…
The reason this number is falling is because lots of Americans have been losing jobs lately.
In fact, we are seeing layoffs at major firms at a level that we have not witnessed since 2009…
The jobs report today has been described as ugly, though it certainly didnt, or shouldnt have, come out of the blue: Layoffs in the energy, Big Tech, retail, and other sectors have recently mucked up our rosy scenario.
The third quarter ended with a surge in job cuts, is how Challenger Gray, which tracks these things, started out its report yesterday. In September, large US-based companies had announced 58,877 layoffs. In the third quarter, they announced 205,759 layoffs, the worst quarter since the 240,233 in the third quarter of 2009!
Year-to-date, were at nearly half a million job cut announcements (493,431 to be precise), up 36% from the same period last year.
Some of the companies that have recently announced layoffs include Wal-Mart, RadioShack, Delta, Sprint, ConAgra, Caterpillar, Bank of America, Halliburton, Qualcomm, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard.
If you need to find a job or you plan to switch jobs in the near future, time is of the essence. Jobs are going to become much, much harder to find in the months ahead, and so every single day of job searching is absolutely critical at this point.
Right now, there are more than 100 million Americans that get some sort of assistance from the federal government every month. Government dependence is at a level that we have never seen before in U.S. history, and it is going to get a lot worse.
If we get to a point where the government is either unwilling or unable to take care of all of these people, we are going to have a massive societal problem on our hands. More than a third of the people living in our nation cannot independently take care of themselves, and more Americans are falling out of the middle class every single day. When the welfare state starts breaking down, the chaos that will ensue will be far worse than most people would dare to imagine.
So what do you think?
Are job losses and layoffs starting to happen in your area?
And they still eat, have a cell phone, probably cable TV and a car with gas in it too.
“And they still eat....”
That not eating business doesn’t work too well.
Government data collected in December 2014 show 18 million immigrants (legal and illegal) living in the United States who arrived in January 2000 or later. But only 9.3 million jobs were added over this time period. In addition, the native-born population 16 and older grew by 25.2 million. Because job growth has not come close to matching immigration and population growth, the share of Americans in the labor force has declined dramatically a clear indication there is no labor shortage.
Despite this, Congress is considering proposals to increase legal immigration even further; and during the last Congress the Senate actually passed the Schumer-Rubio bill (S.744), which would have doubled legal immigration and legalized illegal immigrants.1 Congress's disregard for the absorption capacity of the U.S. labor market has profound consequences for American workers.
This can’t be true. The .gov says we’re nearing full employment. /sarc
Which puts the real unemployment rate in the neighborhood of 40 plus percent. Yet, no riots ‘cause the Marxists are providing them with food, clothing, shelter, cell phones, TV’s medicines etc. using the money from those foolish enough to believe in the American dream or just printing up more with the acquiescence of the gutless Republicans in the Congress. Waiting for the Margaret Thatcher axiom to be fulfilled.
truth is, the govt class is doing very well, especially their retired on their fat pensions...
throw in the people on govt welfare, one kind or another, with SSDI leading the way...
you have military retirees...another blessed group...
throw in the food stamps, the free college, the free phones, the free bus passes, the free or reduced price living quarters....
why work?....why the hell work?
you don't hear any outcry because so many have screwed the system and are happy getting away with it...
I believe it. I am not counted among the unemployed but I need a job. I haven’t worked for money for [many] years. Trying to find a job is extremely difficult. There must be other people like me who are typing to enter the work force but no one knows to count us as unemployed.
I know another person who lost their job and then started a business that isn’t thriving but could also use employment as they struggle to live off of a very tiny business. There must be plenty of people doing that, too.
A little health food store here put out a sign one day, Help Wanted, and got 300 applicants.
And they still eat, have a cell phone, probably cable TV and a car with gas in it too.
Would you like me and my four children to starve to death? We exist on the kindness of relatives. I’m not taking your tax dollars. But just because we aren’t actually starving or in the street, you want to make snide comments?
Heroic efforts are being made to cloak the stagnation of the U.S. economy. One of these is to shift the unemployed work force from the negative-sounding jobless category to the benign-sounding Not in the Labor Force category.
But re-labeling stagnation does not magically transform a stagnant economy.
However, it's been my experience that oftentimes when people say, "I can't find a job", they mean, "I can't find a job that I want."
"A job that I'm not over- or under-qualified for, that has the correct level of pay or higher, that's convenient for me to get to, that's close to where I live and doesn't require that I relocate, that has the right benefits, and allows me to work hours that are acceptable. Oh, and it needs to be much, much better than any government benefits that I might currently be getting."
That's a little different from "There's no work."
I've job-hunted before, plenty of times. Used to frustrate me to no end. Perfect job...nope gotta re-locate. Great pay....nope, gotta travel 100%. I can do this....nope, they want eight years of experience, not three. And so on. End result? Sometimes ya need to learn to bend a little.
It will be interesting to watch the workplace unfold over the next generation. Lots and lots of special snowflakes that have had every whim coddled to that are coming of working age AND are in for a rough education. What happens, for instance, when they run into an H1B worker who will do their entry-level work, for 1/2 the price, move anywhere, travel anywhere, and not give management any guff over it? It'll be like a bug hitting a windshield.
Despite this, Congress is considering proposals to increase legal immigration even further; and during the last Congress the Senate actually passed the Schumer-Rubio bill (S.744), which would have doubled legal immigration and legalized illegal immigrants.1 Congress's disregard for the absorption capacity of the U.S. labor market has profound consequences for American workers.
Corporatists and leftists have joined forces to gut the American middle class.
H-1B ping. Let me know if you're not on the list and want to be added (or are and want to be removed).
Add me to the list. Thanks.
That just says there is a preference for the desperate over the free. Unlike people that can afford the luxury of refusing work, desperate individuals are easier to manage - especially if they lack citizenship. Encouraging it only makes for a backstabbing workforce.
People have bent themselves enough in their job search. Get rid of the fraud and abuse relating to noncitizen labor - then one can talk about laziness.
THAT is what needs to be addressed. This whole "stopped looking for a job" thing always struck me as so strange. How do you survive if you aren't working? How can you choose not to work?
Now I know. Welfare (taxpayers), disability (taxpayers), living with your parents (taxpayers).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.