Regardless of what people say about the unemployment rate under Obama, the manipulation stated a while ago and well before Obama was anywhere near the government. The most drastic change to the unemployment rate that skewed the calculation into a meaningless number that politicians use to their advantage, was done under Clinton! Since this change the OFFICIAL unemployment rate is a farce. This bullshit value is used to project unemployment rate that distorts true picture and well under-values employment rates. I mean a so-called discourage worker who has not 'supposedly' looked for work in 30 days is removed from the calculation, which has a positive effect on the unemployment rate (hence has the equivalent of listing these unemployed workers are employed).
Brief History:
JFK - Coined the term discourage workers.
Nixon - Created the bullshit manipulation seasonally adjustment.
Reagan (the only legit change) - Classified members of the military as employed, which makes sense.
Clinton - Took the discouraged workers and removed them from the unemployment calculation.
Bush - continued this boneheaded unemployment rate to make his numbers look better than they are.
Obama - Naturally did also.
Brief History:
JFK - Coined the term discourage workers.
Nixon - Created the bullshit manipulation seasonally adjustment.
Reagan (the only legit change) - Classified members of the military as employed, which makes sense.
Clinton - Took the discouraged workers and removed them from the unemployment calculation.
[Report] | Numbers Racket, by Kevin Phillips | Harper's Magazine - Part 2
It was left to the Clinton Administration to implement these convoluted CPI measurements, which were reiterated in 1996 through a commission headed by Boskin and promoted by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. The Clintonites also extended the Pollyanna Creep of the nations employment figures. Although expunged from the ranks of the unemployed, discouraged workers had nevertheless been counted in the larger workforce. But in 1994, the Bureau of Labor Statistics redefined the workforce to include only that small percentage of the discouraged who had been seeking work for less than a year. The longer-term discouragedsome 4 million U.S. adultsfell out of the main monthly tally. Some now call them the hidden unemployed. For its last four years, the Clinton Administration also thinned the monthly household economic sampling by one sixth, from 60,000 to 50,000, and a disproportionate number of the dropped households were in the inner cities; the reduced sample (and a new adjustment formula) is believed to have reduced black unemployment estimates and eased worsening poverty figures.
Bush - continued this boneheaded unemployment rate to make his numbers look better than they are.
Obama - Naturally did also.