You have heard the latest Bureau Of Labor Statistics unemployment figures trumpeted by the liberal media . . . “unemployment rate down to 7.8 %!” . . . and of course the Obama machine is touting it as “‘more proof his policies are working.” It is a virtual lie if emphasized as meaningful without a more complete statistical picture. Reported as such even without emphasis it is an isolated statistical anomaly at best.
Educate your friends. The truth is that lone figure masks a worsening employment situation. It is a percentage based on the number of people in or seeking employment, defined as the work force. That “work force” is a declining number because of or without benefit from Obama’s policies. Any individuals who do happen to find work currently are compared to a smaller base number and the percentage then appears larger compared to what the same number would be compared to the previous higher base number.
Here are some comments and links to put the figure in perspective.
From James Pethokoukis at the American Enterprise Institute:
“Only in an era of depressingly diminished expectations could the September jobs report be called a good one. It really isn’t. Not at all.”
” . . . Yes, the U-3 unemployment rate fell to 7.8%, the first time it has been below 8% since January 2009. But that’s only due to a flood of 582,000 part-time jobs.”
” . . . The shrunken workforce remains shrunken. If the labor force participation rate was the same as when President Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be 10.7%. If the participation rate had just stayed steady since the start of the year, the unemployment rate would be 8.4% vs. 8.3%. Where’s the progress?”
” . . . much of the decline is accounted for by people dropping out of the labor force (over the last year the employment-population ratio has risen to only 58.7% from 58.4%). We believe part of the drop in the unemployment rate over the last two months is a statistical quirk (the household data show an increase in employment of 873,000 in September, which is completely implausible and likely a result of sampling volatility). Moreover, declining labor force participation over the last year (resulting in 1.1 million people disappearing from the labor force) accounts for much of the rest of the decline.”
” . . . The 114,000 jobs created would have been a good number … but for 1962, not 2012. The U.S. economy needs 2-3 times that number every month to close the jobs gap (which is the number of jobs that the U.S. economy needs to create in order to return to pre-recession employment levels while also absorbing the people who enter the labor force each month.) At 114,000 jobs a month, the jobs gap would not close until after 2025 . . .”
“Bottom line: The U.S. labor market remains in a deep depression with virtually no recovery since the official end of the Great Recession. But the Long Recession continues unabated.”
Maybe some more quotes and links on this subject later RM
Seriously these job figures are phonier than the staged Obama/Hillary Bin Laden raid photo.
He’s made a career out of being a phony… it should come as a surprise now that he resorts to the same strategy in a last-ditch effort to maintain control over what they once seized. Expect nothing less than Hollywood-budget ads promoting artificial successes and an over-abundance of poo-flinging for the next straight month. It’s literally all these clowns have at this point.