- Banned
- #81
Yes, our 16.3% unemployment is a good sign for the economy. The fact is that the economy is not improving, because the fundamentals of the economy have only gotten worse since this crisis hit. More inflation, more debt, businesses as a drain on the economy, etc... This recession isn't over. If they've succeeded in reflating the bubble, and that's a big "if," then we're simply going to see a bigger bust down the road.
In November of 2007, when this recession officially started, Unemployment was at 4.5%.
It was at 8.9% in February when Obama took office.
Unemployment is currently at 9.6%.
Google - public data
Which means that almost all this unemployment happened under the Bush administration.
You can try to use any form of distorted figures you want, and claim that they're the "true" unemployment rate, but then of course you would have to apply those same figures to every other presidency, with the end results being exactly the same.
The way they computed unemployment during the Great Depression was to also count those who have simply given up searching for a job and those who are looking for a job but have taken on a temporary low paying job in the meantime. If we add those two categories to today's unemployment numbers we come up with 16.8%. Which means that we're much closer to the Great Depression's unemployment numbers than the government would like to admit.
But they used the numbers that we use now for the Reagan administration, which had a high unemployment rate of 10.4% 2 1/2 years after Reagan took office. So, by your count Reagan had an 17.6% unemployment rate?
And, no matter what the method you use to calculate it is, Unemployment has still only risen by around .7% since Obama took office.
In addition, Women did not work during the Great Depression, which means that depression numbers, if directly compared to todays numbers, would be around a 60% unemployment rate.