Friday, August 07, 2009

BARACK OBAMA

So What's the Real Unemployment Rate?

Hmm. In June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the civilian labor force was 154,926,000 people.

In July, 796,000 of those were taken out of their definition of the workforce, and thus their unemployment calculations for this month, because they have stopped looking for work "because they believe no jobs are available for them." Ten percent of the June workforce would be 15.4 million, 1 percent would be 1.5 million, and so 796,000 is roughly one half of one percent.

In other words, BLS took .5 percent of what you and I would consider unemployed and took them out of their total. And with that, unemployment went down one tenth of one percent.

Of course, if you take the July number of unemployed, 14.5 million, and add that 796,000 of discouraged workers, you get a total of 15,296,000.

In a work force of July’s number of 154,504,000, that’s an unemployment rate of 9.9 percent.

In a work for of June’s number of 154,926,000, that’s an unemployment rate of 9.8 percent.

UPDATE: Apparently we're in the Economy of the Beast, with 6.66 million lost jobs over 19 months of contraction.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A few folks with serious reading-comprehension issues are interpreting this post as accusing the Bureau of Labor Statistics of "fudging" the unemployment numbers. No, BLS has always taken the "discouraged workers" out of their workforce pool, and I never suggested that they did not. It's just that the number of them in this recession means the BLS definition of "unemployed" is working out in an extremely convenient manner for the Obama administration. Roughly 800,000 people who want jobs and can't find any disappeared off the books.

The unemployment rate declined from month to month, even though the total number of Americans employed with a job decreased. If you don't find that a signal that the happy headlines are misleading, I don't know what else to tell you.

08/07 09:17 AMShare