Posted on 02/03/2012 7:10:28 AM PST by Rennes Templar
A month ago, we joked when we said that for Obama to get the unemployment rate to negative by election time, all he has to do is to crush the labor force participation rate to about 55%. Looks like the good folks at the BLS heard us: it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million.
No, that's not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation.
As for the quality of jobs, as withholding taxes roll over year over year, it can only mean that the US is replacing high paying FIRE jobs with low paying construction and manufacturing. So much for the improvement.
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
I was told that part of the sampling was due to an adjustment in the annual benchmark where fewer companies are sampled so any increase in employment will result in a larger drop of unemployment percentage. The actual unemployment rate including those that gave up looking in 15.1%.
There was 137 million available jobs in Jan. 2009 but today they only calculate 135 million “available” jobs.
That is great MrB!
A very good definition from Abbot and Costello, and a good explanation of why these statistics games played by the feds need to be stopped. About a half-dozen stat categories that they probably already have, if put together to add up to 100%, would give us a real picture of what is going on with our working age population.
And it should be against the law to release any employment stats without telling us what percentage of working age adults are on welfare.
Never would work, those figures can’t be manipulated. But you are 100% right. Just aggravating why we can’t have straight forward communication on this.
The MSM won’t care about bad numbers until a Republican’s in office.
This is exactly what happened in the old Soviet Union and for the same reasons. Government...Government...Government. God save the Republic!
Obama is still counting on the stupidity of the majority of the country. Hey! An American Idol re-run is on! Gotta go!
Scrutinize the next unemployment report directly at the http://www.bls.gov without getting it filtered through the attention-deficit media. You’ll see some of those breakdowns there as U4 through U6.
Another 10 million dropping out by November will get the rate under 7% and happy days are here again.
You can pick the time span at the top of the page.
not watching FOX so I have tried to watch CNN in the morning,
how on this earth can anyone take that channel seriously, they were all cheering up the unemployment figures, yesterday the debt has gone down, yea it is now only being spent 1.2 tril instead of 1.3 tril.
You’d have thought everyone was doing well if you watch the MSM, funny how they did not mention any of the real figures.
We all knew the MSM was going to fudge numbers and not report the real figures to help their messiah.
This is another reason why we need someone with balls in that whites house and it is not Romney, we need an investigation into the MSM working with this white house to get him elected and covering for him and ten have it go public.
Wow!!! At that rate the population of the country would go to zero in less than a decade.
The problem is the way they define "no longer seeking work". If you are not getting unemployment, they say you are no longer seeking work. My sister in law has been "no longer seeking work" for almost 2 years now, despite applying to several positions per week.
Her unemployment benefits ran out less than a year and a half after she lost her job due to the hospital where she worked being sold to another entity. She lived in a state where unemployment was low enough that they didn't get the last increment of federal "emergency" benefits. So she got 6 months of state benefits plus 47 weeks of federal benefits. She's been out of work for something like 3 years now.
In my case, I've only had two jobs since getting my master's back in '77. Laid off from both of them. The first under the Clinton Consolidation of the defense industry, and now under the Obama cuts. I've "only" been out of work for about 13 months. I'll run out of unemployment benefits in about 4 more months, if I haven't found something by then. That's 6 months of state benefits and 47 weeks (about 10.5 months) of federal benefits. That "benefit" is less than 1/4 of my previous salary. And it's taxable, as is my severance pay from the lay off.
It's actually worse than that. Even if you continue to look for work, if you aren't getting unemployment then you aren't counted as looking for work, and thus as unemployed. Plus, if you are working part time as burger flipper, instead of your normal occupation of Rocket Scientist, you aren't counted either.
Actually they reduce both the numerator and the denominator. But until we get to the point were the discouraged are nearly as many as the labor force they will be reducing the numerator by a much higher fraction.
%unemployed = 100 *
(number "looking for work")/((number employed) + (number "looking for work"))
If they don't count as "looking for work" those who really are actually still looking but who can no longer get unemployment benefits that decreases both numerator and denominator, but the numerator by a larger fraction, and thus the %unemployed number decreases. Even if the "number employed" increases less than the number actually looking for work does, and even if it decreases.
Now this is way so complicated for some; like talk show guy, Hughes H. Changing denominators and such, not withstanding the mathmatically challenged, this _is_ a significant reason USG unemployment is getting better, so quickly, too.
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