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Friday, December 2, 2011

US Unemployment Drops/Rises/Stands Pat - Take Your Pick

US Unemployment Drops/Rises/Stands Pat - Take Your Pick


“It’s the old “figures lie” and “liars figure” routine that used to work on the electorate.  Now-a-days, the voters are wise to the trickery.”

By Dell Hill via Ace

It’s the obligatory “unemployment went down...hooray for our side”...”no, it didn’t....more people gave up and you took them out of the calculation” argument.

Unemployment Rate Drops to 8.6%, Due To Fact Obama's Economy Is So Foul It's Driven Out Hundreds Of Thousands of Job Seekers Out of the Market Entirely


Linking Pethokoukis' "7 Reasons the Economy Is Still Terrible," Goldstein writes:

[I]t is crucial that “our” side point out the Magical Shrinking Labor Force. As Pethokoukis notes, “The participation rate fell from an already low 64.2 percent to 64.0 percent. In a strong jobs recovery, that number should be rising as more people look for work. If the the labor force participation rate were back at its January 2009 level, the U-3 rate would be 11.0 percent.

I have no argument with that. What strikes me is that this is so infrequently done.

It is not a very math-heavy exercise to explain that the unemployment rate is the percentage of people seeking work but not finding it, and if lots of people simply give up looking altogether, the unemployment rate technically falls while the actual employment rate -- actual labor participation -- falls even further.

I can imagine Obama and a Republican To Be Named Later debating these numbers. I can see Obama saying "The unemployment rate dropped from 8.9% in September to 8.6% in November, so we're making progress."

And I can see the Republican To Be Named Later saying, "We have more people out of work now that at any time in our history."

It’s the old “figures lie” and “liars figure” routine that used to work on the electorate.  Now-a-days, the voters are wise to the trickery.

1 comment:

  1. The numbers will continue to go down as bho people game the system & many sheeple will fall for it.

    ReplyDelete