Trump: Unemployment Rate As High As 40%

Real Clear Politics ^

[TigerClaws]

At Trump Tower, only a few blocks away from the meeting of world leaders at the United Nations, GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump announced his new plan to reform the U.S. tax code. After the main announcement, he took questions from the press.

On how his plan would address income inequality:

TRUMP: In terms of income inequality, we're going to create a lot of jobs. You know, right now we have a false [unemployment rate] 5.4%, 5.3%, 5.6%, every month it is different. It is such a phony number. Because when people look and look and look and then they give up looking for a job, they're taken off the rolls so the number isn't reflective.

[TigerClaws]

WRONG.

It counts those 20 and older, not kids.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/record-94031000-americans-not-labor-force-participation-rate-stuck-38-year

[TigerClaws]

Underemployed aren’t counted in these numbers. Lots of college grads now working waiting tables...

[zek157]

Trump is closer than official numbers from BLS.

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data

[itsahoot]

Until you factor those in then how can Trump or you or anyone say the unemployment rate is 40%?

325 million people here according to Census. 94 million are not working. That is near 30% if everyone of the 325 million were employable.

[DoodleDawg]

Trump is closer than official numbers from BLS.

It's not hard to come up with figures different from the BLS since their metrics are based on very narrow definitions. And those figures are probably more accurate than the BLS. But saying there are 94 million unemployed isn't close to accurate.

[DoodleDawg]

Can’t answer it, huh?

[DoodleDawg]

A lot of the categories you “discount” are there in big numbers precisely because the employment & wage situation IS so bad. “Might as well go back to school / stay in college / retire / “stay home” / see if I can get by on disability / etc. when the opportunities are so cr***y”, and the support system so benevolent.

How much?

[central_va]

Can’t answer it, huh?

[Carthego delenda est]

“Yet his 1st option is to sue for disability on the basis he “can’t work” for the rest of his life. But he can drive, and fish, just fine!”

It has become such a socially acceptable course of action that people are willing to go to extreme lengths to *prove* their disability. The stigma associated with being unemployed or deemed *disabled* has all but been removed. At one time being disabled conjured up images of a veteran missing both legs or something similar. Now it has expanded to include every conceivable discomfort.

[DoodleDawg]

David Stockman Says Unemployment Is Really 42.9 Percent

From your article: "Stockman cites the number of 210 million adult Americans...."

How does Stockman define "adult American"? And why doesn't he factor in people in school, retired, unable to work, or not working by choice?

[piytar]

Trump merely said that is the highest number he has heard from an economist. He also said the official number is cooked.

How is that “cooking the books”?!

[zek157]

Stockman cites the number of 210 million adult Americans, who if they worked 2,000 hours per year, or about 40 hours per week, would deliver 420 million labor hours per year. When compared to the 240 million labor hours per year reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the total workforce of the country is delivering 57.1 percent of those 420 million labor hours, and otherwise stated, 42.9 percent of those hours are not being delivered. Therefore, the calculation of unemployment by this measure is 42.9 percent.

Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/2218523/david-stockman-says-unemployment-is-really-42-9-percent/#pO57ruweVF5eoB2U.99

[Fresh Wind]

Of those, 157 million are employed.

Nope. Look here. This shows the labor force as about 157 million.

What you need to understand is what they mean by "labor force". They define that term as the total of employed and unemployed persons.

[MichaelCorleone]

“Until you factor those in then how can Trump or you or anyone say the unemployment rate is 40%?”

I guess you’ll have to ask the economists who said that.

For the record, Donald Trump did not crunch the numbers himself - by his own admission he got that from (presumably educated) economists.

Further, he said that economists put the number at 20%, 32%...some as high as 42%. He also didn’t leave anyone with the impression 40% was the consensus.

[Aut Pax Aut Bellum]

If I look at a jobs listing, the government considers me to be “employed”!

[Fresh Wind]

By the way, 261 minus 157 is 104, not 94.

[proxy_user]

Most college students, housewives, and retirees do not rely on the government. College students rely on their parents, housewives rely on their husbands, and retirees rely on the money they have saved while working.

[Safetgiver]

People know they are unemployed even when the govt claims they aren’t........I have repeatedly, over the years, said the UE rate is at least 30-30%. Nobody factors in the last seven years of college/ tech school grads. SSSH. Don’t bring that up.

[kabar]

The 157,065,000 who participated in the labor force equaled only 62.6 percent of the 251,096,000 civilian noninstitutional population -- the same as it was in July and June. Not since October 1977, when the participation rate dropped to 62.4, has the percentage been this low.

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) ticked up in August to 6,483,000, 158,000 more than the 6,325,000 recorded in July. These individuals, who would have preferred full-time employment, were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

Labor Particpation rate

In December 2014 there were 18 million immigrants (legal and illegal) living in the country who had arrived since January 2000.2 But job growth over this period was just 9.3 million — half of new immigration

A record 94,031,000 Americans were not in the American labor force last month -- 261,000 more than July -- and the labor force participation rate stayed stuck at 62.6 percent, a 38-year low, for a third straight month in August, the Labor Department reported on Friday, as the nation heads into the Labor Day weekend.

In January 1948 -- the first year the data was recorded -- 88.7 percent of men, aged 20 and older, were participating in the U.S. labor force. The rate first dipped below 80 percent in November 1975 (79.9%), spiraling steadily downward through August 2015, when 71.5 percent of men 20 and older were participating in the labor force.

[newfreep]

f there are 94 million CITIZENS out of work, why do we need 11, 20, 30 million illegals here?

1. There are more than 40 MILLION ILLEGAL ALIEN INVADERS.

2. This represents new leftist voters to permanently establish a leftwing socialist government, finally destroy the Constitution and "fundamentally change" America.