Fudging the Unemployment Numbers

With an election less than a year away, Americans are being lied to by the American Pravda and the Obama regime. They would like us to believe that the economy is improving when that is just not the case.

Yes, unemployment numbers are falling, but we are not being told the entire story. What is disturbing is that the average uninformed American may likely believe their spin and be more willing to give Obama another term in office which is exactly what they are counting on.

Read from Weasel Zippers:

MSM Hype: Unemployment Rate Drops To 8.3%! – Grim Reality: Thanks To 1.2 Million People Dropping Out of Work Force In One Month…

"Don’t buy into today’s BS unemployment rate drop the MSM and the Dems have been crowing over. And yes, you read the headline correctly, a stunning 1.2 million Americans dropped out of the work force during December alone artificially lowering the official unemployment rate.



To make matters worse, the jobs gained are classified as 'low-wage jobs.'

Via Zero Hedge:


'A month ago, we joked when we said that for Obama to get the unemployment rate to negative by election time, all he has to do is to crush the labor force participation rate to about 55%. Looks like the good folks at the BLS heard us: it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million. No, that’s not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation. As for the quality of jobs, as withholding taxes roll over Year over year, it can only mean that the US is replacing high paying FIRE jobs with low paying construction and manufacturing. So much for the improvement.'


Keep reading…"



Read from The American:

[...]

"Even though the unemployment rate fell, so did the labor force participation rate (as more Americans became discouraged and gave up looking for work). Here’s what that means:

1. If the size of the U.S. labor force as a share of the total population was the same as it was when Barack Obama took office—65.7 percent then vs. 63.7 percent today—the U-3 unemployment rate would be 11.0 percent.

2. But let’s not go all the way back to January 2009. In January 2011, the unemployment rate was 9.1 percent with a participation rate of 64.2 percent. If that were the participation rate today, the unemployment rate would be 8.9 percent, instead of 8.3 percent. As an analysis from Hamilton Place Strategies concludes, 'Most of the shift of the past year is due not to the improvement in the labor market, but the continued drop in participation in the labor force.'

3. Now, to be fair, some of the decline in the participation rate is aging Baby Boomers dropping out of the labor force. But taking that into account still doesn’t get us very far, as HPS notes:


'Demographic projections expect that participation rate to be at 65.3 percent. If that full participation rate is the goal, our economy is “missing” 3.8 million workers, up from the 3.4 million we noted in the white paper. The unemployment rate in that context has not budged at 10.4 percent.'


4. Then there’s the broader, U-6 measure of unemployment which includes the discouraged plus part-timers who wish they had full time work. That unemployment rate is still a sky-high 15.1 percent.

5. If the participation rate does level off at its current rate, according to HPS, the economy would need to generate 231,000 jobs per month to get below 8 percent unemployment by Election Day. If the participation rate continues its downward slide, however, that number would be much lower—perhaps as low as 131,000 jobs a month (see below chart). But such a decline wouldn’t necessarily be good news."


More here."


Rush Limbaugh made the following comment:

"No president has ever been re-elected when the unemployment rate’s over 8 percent, so guess what it’s going to be by the time we get to Election Day."


And from Rick Santelli: