The Whitehouse is touting the fact that the unemployment rate just dropped to 9.0%. What great news, if only it were true. Funny how facts and figures seem to get in the way of the folks in DC.
Here’s a quick way to lower the unemployment rate. Don’t count a half million of the chronically unemployed. That would be folks that have been unemployed for more than a year and have come to the conclusion that it ain’t happening. They, often one half of a married couple, decides to wait it out until things look better. Since they don’t file for unemployment any longer, you take them off the rolls of unemployment and they magically make the unemployment numbers look better.
The interesting facts that came out today were that job creation in the past month was far below expectations of 145,000 jobs. In fact, so far below expectations, that by any measure the unemployment should have soared. But it fell? Scratching your head too?
This past month the economy created 36,000 jobs, nearly 110,000 less than expected, and nearly 80,000 less than is needed just to keep the unemployment rate stable. But somehow the unemployment rate dropped by nearly half a percent. Amazing. If you can’t fix the problem…fix the numbers.
How incredibly cynical is it to twist the facts to improve the news. Doesn’t give you much trust in government, does it? So, lets muddy the waters a bit more. The labor department assesses business payrolls versus household surveys. This is another factor in their reporting of the unemployment rate. Confusing? Yes. One might think that it would be a simple matter of looking at the number of people employed by companies versus the number of people of working age versus the number of persons in full-time school; throw a little math in and ipso-facto, you know the true unemployment rate. No questions of who has given up looking or who chooses not to work. The number would represent the number of people not working, and isn’t that the true unemployment rate? Well, isn’t it?
Based on 36,000 new jobs, there was, in fact, no new jobs created. Huh? Yes, you read that right, 36,000 jobs equates to no new jobs. If you take the normal number of people that leave employment in any month, plus the number of new folks entering the job market, 36,000 created jobs actually represents a loss of nearly 80,000 jobs. I know, it can be confusing. I’ll simplify it by saying, the ratio of jobs to job seekers is not improving. Obamanomics isn’t working. You know it, I know it and sadly our President knows it. Fixing it appears to be more a matter of painting a pretty picture rather than changing reality. At least that is what his Labor Department is telling us. Now where’s that shovel ready job I’ve been looking for? Looks like the shoveling is going on alright, but it ain’t jobs that are coming our way.