I was watching an interview with an economist this morning. He was stating that the actual unemployment rate is now over 20%; but the government is keeping the official rate at about 10%. Further, they have changed the definition of a job. Now a job is counted if it has been authorized even though there is no funding for it. Or, if there is an intention to create new positions or somebody might be hiring, it is counted as a job the administration has created or saved. New jobs no longer mean that somebody who wasn't working before is now working or somebody started up a new business or expanded an existing one and actually hired more people.
So, I went looking for more information about that and found this:
So, I went looking for more information about that and found this:
Unemployment Officially At 10% … But It’s Really 21.9%
Friday, January 8th
It’s that time again. This morning, the Department of Labor released the official statistics for U.S. unemployment last month. And just as the Obama administration promised, things are getting better. Right?
Wrong.
Optimists were looking for the first signs of net job creation last month since 2007. At worst, they were hoping for the jobless rate to hold steady at 10.0%. And the worst is what is what they got.
The official unemployment rate for December remained unchanged at 10.0% at a time when the Obama administration really, really could have used some good news to offset all the bad news and screw-ups lately. No progress on the job front. Zip. The streak of monthly job losses is extended one more month to now total 24, with no sign things are getting better. And the only public event on the President’s calendar today is an afternoon statement to the press on joblessness.
It will be interesting to see if he again says, “the buck stops here.” For all too many Americans, the buck is stopping before it gets into their hands to pay the bills, buy food and pay for other necessities.
But before the spin hits the fan, here’s the really bleak news that you won’t hear the President talking about this afternoon. The real unemployment rate–the rate as it used to be calculated before the Clinton administration decided in 1994 that it all depended on what “unemployed” meant, actually crept upwards in December.
The more accurate unemployment rate, also released this morning by the Department of Labor, rose from 17.2% in November to 17.3% in December. And that is at a time when seasonal, temporary jobs for the holidays should have taken a lot of people off the unemployment rolls at least temporarily.
As I’ve reported before, the “official” unemployment rate bears about as much relationship to the true number of people who are unemployed in America as the Climate Research Unit’s fraudulent “global warming” data bears to the real average temperature people have been experiencing the last ten years. The unemployment numbers given out by the government are less than 50% of the actual number of people who are unemployed in this country.
A picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s a chart, courtesy of John Williams, of American Business Analytics and Research and Shadowstats.com and reproduced with his permission, that shows how bad unemployment in the land of Hope and Change® really is:
The lowest, red line on the chart is the official number the administration and the mainstream media will be talking about today. It is called the U3 rate. The middle, gray line is also an official government number–but one that President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid would just as soon you never knew about. That is the U6 rate. First, let me explain the difference between these two official government figures and why nearly everything you hear today on the news about unemployment is basically going to be a lie. I’ll talk about the highest, blue line afterward.
MORE HERE:
Unemployment Officially At 10% … But It’s Really 21.9% - malbis’s blog - RedState
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