Now that everyone is in a lather over the supposed fabulous employment numbers, let’s take a better look. I am not even talking about the 42,000 couriers that are seasonal at the end of the year. I am talking about the labor force participation rate that continues to mask “the real story!” Just in the past two months, 365,000 people supposedly left the workforce…helping the unemployment rate down. I would like to get that list of 365,000 people. Oh…that’s right…there isn’t any list. The bigger story is that since January of 07, over 7.5 million have left the labor force. Simply put, I can make the unemployment rate 7% overnight. Just take another couple million off this list. KEEP IN MIND…this number should go up when the job market is improving as more people gain more confidence and actually join the labor force.
Chart Source: http://www.zerohedge.com/
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Finally!
Besides, Karl Denninger and zero hedge, it about time that someone with some much more radio/tv clout has brought to light this trend. Karl posted this chart over on Market ticker back in 2009 and I didn’t hear it mentioned anywhere else since.
Its lovely how the government plays with the numbers isn’t it? Like the calculation of the GDP which includes deficit spending as if it was production.
According to the USDebtclock.org site, there’s just under 141M in the US work force and the actual unemployed numbered a little over 23M. Calculated, that comes out to 16.6% unemployed.