Tuesday, February 03, 2015

Only 44% of us are working

Coming as absolutely no surprise to anybody who reads Zero Hedge, the CEO of Gallup today declared the "official" unemployment rate as one gigantic lie to the American people.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Conservatives have complained for years that the labor participant rate... is often ignored by the press.

They have complained for six years, to be precise. For mysterious reasons, George W. Bush's equally fictional unemployment rates didn't bother them.

Before that, the supposed stats were a fraudulent part of the Clinton bubble. Before that, they were proof that Reaganomics was turning this country around.

Democratic critics of how unemployment is calculated saw things the other way around. Just a difference of opinion.

Here are a few of the various tweaks and adjustments to the official formula. Through chance, every one of them resulted in a lower unemployment rate:

*Kennedy: Removed "discouraged workers" from the unemployment statistic
*Reagan: Reclassified the military from "not in the labor force" to "employed"
*Clinton: Went JFK one better by removing "discouraged workers" from the labor rolls

All presidents from Reagan to Obama have overseen sharp, steady increases in people being classified as disabled, or sent to prison. That's about 8 million people who could be expected to combine for a 70%-90% unemployment rate (estimates vary) expunged from the labor force.

Eric said...

Here are those right-wing liars at the Federal Reserve showing the labor participation rate is at the lowest level since 1978.

When Jimmy Carter was President. Jimmy Carter.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CIVPART/

Jimmy Carter.

B. Gumble said...

He's history's greatest employer!