Heather Long, Rhodes Scholar - CNN Money
Posted on 09/28/2015 5:47:46 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The official U.S. unemployment rate is 5.1% -- the lowest in seven years -- but Donald Trump calls that a "joke."
On Monday, he claimed he'd seen numbers that show America's real unemployment rate is as high as 42%.
How does he arrive at such a wild figure?
Trump appears to be looking at the number of American adults not working. Period.
Out of about 251 million American adults, roughly 102 million -- or 40.6% -- aren't working.
But, of course, there are a lot of reasons people don't work. They could be disabled, in college, at home raising kids or retired.
And you wouldn't include those groups in the unemployment rate, which tries to capture how many people are actively looking for work and can't find it....
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
the 42% is based on a misunderstanding of what labor participation rate means.You being the expert on labor participation rates and all.
Heather Long, Rhodes Scholar - CNN Money
Doesn’t take an expert actually.
The base figure for the population includes all intentionally retired people, a massive population. The labor participation rate is never more than 70% or so. By design. Now it’s abysmal now - and it means the real unemployment figure is something like 12-15% - but not 42.
Because that would mean children in high school, full time students in college, anyone who is retired, people who don't work by choice like stay-at-home moms, and people who are medically incapable of working are all unemployed. Would you agree with that?
Lots of retired people are paying their own way.
Sounds like CNN is sort of quoting Trump remembering something about payrolls as a percentage of the total civilian non-institutional population--
--which shows a % about where Trump's quoted by the always truthful CNN. In other words, things are as bad now as they were when Reagan was president. imho the number says more about today's economy than the headline unemployment, but we'll need to lose the "real-unemployment" name and perhaps call it the "not-employment rate".
Great minds think alike! I’ve said for years that the over cooked U3 and U6 numbers are just a playground for deception. It should be simple....say there are 95 million adults NOT working....that’s 40%.....and for example 27% are retired - so that’s 13% who are not working who SHOULD be working.
bkmk
When you add in the illegals, can we see your super math skills then?
I think his point is that the unemployment numbers don’t include those who ......Graduated college, high school, the Armed Forces and tech school in the last seven years and couldn’t find a job. My take has been the UE rate is 30-35% for sure, in the last seven years, and possibly 40-43% now.
This might get people to start thinking about how the official unemployment number is calculated...Using the formula that WAS used during the Bush years (4.1%) it is possible today’s figure is over 40%.
It's pretty pathetic that my very basic mathematical extrapolations are considered "super" - because I certainly never said they were anything other than basic common sense and an understanding of the the LFPR is. Labor Participation is a very basic simply formula, unlike the U3 and U6. Sorry if it's over your head. And confidence envy is not attractive.
40 percent unemployment, 40 million illegals, and printing money like there is no tomorrow!
Double standard - someone else ALWAYS starts the snark PING.
somewhere between 25 and 30 per cent are unemployed by design...retirees, students, etc. Should we count those?
I have a personal snark against c Edmund as he started it with me first many Trump threads ago. Get your facts at least half straight.
If the labor force participation rate is 62%, then there is a reasonable argument that can be made for a 38% unemployment rate. If one considers that the ‘labor force’ has arbitrary age limits placed on it by the government (something like 16-65), then it’s fair easy to add another 4% to that 38%.
And just because someone doesn’t want to work, and loves sucking off the public teat, that doesn’t make that person NOT unemployed. He is terribly, deceitfully unemployed.
who are you? I’ve no memory of your banal screen name.
OK c stands for chicken Wright. I was the first one on your secret trumpbot list. You don’t retain much, obviously. When will you release the full list?
Let me repeat....there are something like 25% who DO NOT WANT to work NOR NEED to work. The labor participation rate even in boom times is about 70%, not 100%.
There is no case to make that its 38-42%. Are there a few points here and there for the over 65 crowd? Perhaps, but again, 70% is full labor participation, not 100%. Having said that, at 62-63, that means there’s another legit 7-8% that should be added to the BS 5% mark....putting legit UE (U3) at 12-13%. God knows what the U6 would be...certainly over 20.
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