RUSH: The real unemployment rate is not 9.4%. If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included in the unemployment rate -- this is what's called U6 -- the total unemployment rate nationwide is 16.3%. If you add the people still looking for work and those who have given up, it's 16.3% unemployed. State-Run Media is trying to make this out to be some big successful day today.
Well, let's compare how GOP Hate-Run Media "reports" the same data.
GOP Hate-Run Media uses only Bush's U3 numbers and not even the U3 numbers passed to him by Clinton and the U3 numbers he passes to Obama but Bush"s best U3 numbers. Furthermore GOP Hate-Run Media claims the Bush Recession of March 2001 was inherited by Bush from Clinton and as you know GOP Hate-Run Media denies Obama inherited a recession.
Clinton inherited a 7.49% U3 unemployment from Bush I and passed a 3.97% U3 and a 7.0% U6 unemployment plus a surplus to Bush II. Bush II in turn passed a 7.2% U3 unemployment to Obama. If you remember GOP Hate-Run Media never used U6 numbers for Bush, but Bush passed a 13.5% U6 unemployment to Obama.
Stack of Stuff Quick Hits Page
August 7, 2009
Story #5: NYT to Claim Unemployment Problem "Decade Old"
RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I have been advised that the New York Times planning heavy coverage for this weekend on the following story. It's being written by Floyd Norris. "In Last Decade, a Lack of Job Growth..." This the just amazing in its malpractice and irresponsibility. Listen to this now. "For the first time since the Depression, the American economy has added virtually no jobs in the private sector over a 10-year period. The total number of jobs has grown a bit, but that is only because of government hiring. The accompanying charts," which I don't have here; I just have the advanced text "show the job performance from July 1999, when the economy was booming and companies were complaining about how hard it was to find workers, through July of this year, when the economy was mired in the deepest and longest recession since World War II."
So from 1999 to now, we have produced no new jobs. We've been in a decade-long jobs recession. The Bush administration never happened! They're willing -- at their near bankrupt newsroom, at the New York Times -- they are willing to put out drivel like this in order to prop up this catastrophe of a president.
You remember it was just two years ago we were at record employment at 4.7%, after coming out of a mild recession that Clinton left us with and then 9/11. We had a growing population. We had a booming economy that they tried to make everybody think was rotten, especially in the second Bush term.
Story #6: AP Admits Unemployment Rate Didn't Really Dip
RUSH: I must mention this. I finally read the full Associated Press story on the new unemployment numbers, and even the AP admits that unemployment didn't really dip. "Employers sharply scale back layoffs in July. The unemployment rate dips for the first time in 15 months, sending a strong signal, the worst recession..."
Then you go to the end of the article, buried at the bottom: "The dip in the unemployment rate was the first since April 2008. One of the reasons the rate declined, though, was that hundreds of thousands of people left the labor force. The labor force includes only those who are either employed or are looking for work." So even AP admits unemployment didn't really dip. We just had a hell of a lot of people give up looking, and they're not counted as members of the labor force. That's what we now know in the BLS figures they put out, Bureau of Labor Statistics. The U6, unemployment 6...
Like 9.4% is U3 and that's people who are employed, looking for work, not employed, on unemployment benefits. U6 is everybody that's looking for work, on unemployment compensation and those who are no longer looking, they've given up, and that rate is 16%. Not 9.4. It is 16, maybe 16.9, but it's 16 something. And even AP admits unemployment didn't really dip. It just went off the charts, just went off the unemployment rolls. Well, we have been rescued. See, AP knows people aren't going to read the bottom of the story. We've been rescued from this catastrophe. The president said so today.
MinnPost - U6: The unemployment rate and the misery index - Political Economy by Steve Perry
U6 is defined as "total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of all civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers."
You can think of this more expansive measure as a sort of employment misery index. And in
December 2008, when the official unemployment rate rose to 7.2 percent, U6 reached 13.5 percent.
The United States Unemployment Rate By Year
Bush, G.H.W.
1992
7.49
Clinton
1993
6.91
1994
6.10
1995
5.59
1996
5.41
1997
4.94
1998
4.50
1999
4.22
2000
3.97