Posted on 04/07/2012 2:18:01 PM PDT by forbushalltheway
Amid disappointing unemployment numbers that fell 80,000 jobs short of projections, another number is raising eyebrows: the number of Americans not in the labor force has hit a record high 87,897,000.
This figure explains why overall unemployment dropped from 8.3% to 8.2%, as the Department of Labor's unemployment figure does not include people who have given up hope and are not actively seeking employment.
When the number of individuals who have stopped looking for a job and/or who are working part-time but desire full-time employment is included--a figure known as the "underemployment rate"--real unemployment stands at 19.1%.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
19% sounds about right. Your neighbors already know. The U6 numbers are close.
Once unemployment insurance ends, people suddenly become disabled. Or they try to sustain their 70k income with the 240k in their 401k plan.
But they are no longer “unemployed” for U4 purposes.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they tweaked it more during Clinton. I thought in the 60s it was changed *from* the way it was measured during the Great Depression to how it is now.
Either way it’s obvious from U6 to U3 the gov’t estimates to their advantage.
Just like good old “core inflation”, what a joke that is; fuel is 4.00$gal but a new laptop is still 500 bucks!
Where are all the msm stories about the homeless or grandmas eating cat food?
At the college -level, the number of post-doc is at an all-time high. The professors are working less, the none-tenbured, and post-docs and the Teachings assistants are doing more—and all for less. An increasing portion of the university’s income to going into administration. They are following the business model, where the upper levels get a greater and greater share for doing less.
The idea of tenure is as destructive at the college level as it is for public-school teachers at the elementary and high school levels; I remember enrolling in courses where you would rarely see the professor who was listed as the instructor of the class.
The whole basis on which the education industry was built up (by which you would improve your alary prospects by investing in education) has crumbled; if anything, the reverse is true: the more you can command in salary, the harder whole industries are working to either 1) have the work done elsewhere, or 2) import foreigners to do it here for (much) less as indentured servants (even if it means training them here to do it). Because of these trends, Americans are looking a lot more closely at how “education dollars” are being spent, and they’re not happy; they are paying more & more for an education worth less and less.
Tenure more or less gives the educator a vested right in the job, he/she can be forced out with a little ingenuity. As in any other line of work. I once worked for the highway department and in this office there was a totally incompetent engineer whom they sent out to do stuff that only required an inspector to handle. He got all the s-—details, and did those so poorly that only the kindness of the boss kept him from being transferred. Anyone with pride would have been long gone.
What do you propose as a solution? Businesses will do this, and they will do much more of this to avoid paying for health insurance. It is not their fault, and they are not “hurting” the economy. They are doing what they have to do to avoid bankruptcy and stay in business. The communists and their regulations are what are hurting this economy.
p.s., I’m no gop-E poster either. I think the first step in recovery is removing oppressive regulations. The second step is to erect trade barriers. The third is erect immigration barriers. The consumer economy does not work if the consumers can’t afford to consume. That’s just poverty.
American workers no longer have the luxury of “pride” anymore; there are mortgage/rent payments, dentist visits for kids, etc.
If tenure wasn’t such a lock on lifetime employment, then why do places like NYC keep hundreds of teachers out of the classroom on full salary? They admit it is because of the legal costs associated with terminating them (due to their tenure); it is UNlike any other job. Public school unions have single-handedly turned NJ into a gubmint worker state in a few decades, where no American (or corporation) would dream of setting up shop; too many alternatives without the nanny-state costs. In the meantime, NJ is becoming a state of illegal aliens and the permanent underclass (the illegals are needed to fill the public school seats formerly occupied by American children - that is why there is no enforcement of immigration laws in NJ); not exactly the revenue sources necessary for the socialist utopia. We’ve already laid off hundreds (if not thousands) of cops across the state due to fiscal issues (the teachers have a stronger union, so they kept their jobs + raises while cops/firefighters have to find work now in the southeastern states if they’re fortunate); the money that fed the government workforce is gone.
NYC is run in a very similar fashion; recall when the city was asked how soon they would replace the 343 firemen killed on 9/11, the initial response was “We won’t”. They already needed to scale back the force (and that was probably related to how much space in the WTC and elsewhere in the city was vacant anyway); these jobs are simply no longer justified in these numbers anymore.
There is a Communist Muslim in the White House, the Media will only have cat food and hard luck stories when there’s a GOP President. Agenda driven stories to support lies (see Global Warming, Trayvon, etc.) are what matter, not silly things, like facts.
Yep.
http://mediamatters.org/research/201204090014
Conservative Media Promote Deceptive Unemployment Talking Point
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