Real Unemployment Rate is 36 Percent

Real Unemployment 36%?

February 21, 2012

Lonely Conservative - John Hayward published a fairly long article about unemployment and the number of Americans who aren’t currently working. It’s worth reading in its entirety, as he explains how the contraction in employment is actually helping President Obama. But here’s the alarming part:

What is the current percentage of working-age Americans, eligible to participate in the civilian labor force, but not currently working? Answer: 36.3 percent.

That’s the worst labor participation rate in three decades, and it’s part of the worst employment picture we’ve seen since the Great Depression. Labor force participation is the number we should really be looking at, even more than the unemployment figures cooked up on the monthly basis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those figures have their uses as well, but it seems reasonable to measure the overall health of the economy by the number of people who simply are not participating in the labor force. (Read More)

Also see my earlier post on the topic.

Unemployment Rate Quietly Hits Nine Percent

While unemployment has risen to 9 percent, underemployment now stands at 19 percent

February 21, 2012

Yahoo! News Contributor - Within hours of the announcement by the Bureau of Labor Statistics announcement that the unemployment rate had dropped to 8.3 percent, Barack Obama was quick to herald the accomplishment.

However, during the entire week following the Feb. 14 survey by Gallup that said the unemployment rate had climbed back up to nine, the president has been curiously silent.

Immediately following the Bureau of Labor Statistics report that 243,000 new jobs were added in January, Obama credited himself and his policies for their creation. However, the president failed to mention that the Bureau of Labor Statistics had already attributed 70,000 of those jobs -- 42,000 couriers and 28,000 retail workers -- to traditionally temporary work brought about by the holiday season.

Additionally, where the New York Post quoted Obama saying "the unemployment rate came down because people found work," the Huffington Post reported economists like Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute saying the unemployment rate also fell in part because the BLS simply removed the 315,000 Americans who dropped out of the labor market from their equation.

Gallup's mid-month unemployment reading has traditionally served as an accurate preliminary estimate of the numbers eventually reported by the U.S. government. Subsequently, where Gallup's mid-January report had also predicted the numbers eventually reported by the BLS -- that unemployment would decrease to 8.3 percent -- their new report suggests the BLS will "likely report on the first Friday of March that its seasonally adjusted unemployment rate increased in February."

Additionally, Gallup's mid-February survey found that 10 percent of America's employees are working part time but want full-time work and the percentage of Americans who can only find part-time work remains close to its January 2010 high. While unemployment has risen to 9 percent, underemployment now stands at 19 percent. That's higher than January's rate of 18.7 percent.

In September, Politico's Glenn Thrush reported that -- in addition to an unemployment rate above 9 percent -- Obama's own staff predicted he will "be coping with a sub-40 percent approval rating" going into November's general election. Despite the efforts of liberal polls that manage to bring Obama's approval number to 50 percent, the Real Clear Politics average places Obama with an approval rating of 48.6 percent. Gallup's Feb. 15-19 survey placed Obama's approval rating at 44 percent.

In September, the administration's own Office of Management and Budget predicted that the unemployment rate would average 9.1 percent this year, and 9.0 percent next year.

Rasmussen's Feb 18 report that shows nearly 60 percent of Americans believe Obama is taking the nation in the wrong direction. Still, Mr. Thrush probably prefers to cling to his delusion that the president's nasty re-election headwinds to "a very well-oiled Republican attack machine that is gleefully blaming his policies for the bad job numbers."

Predictably, where the White House and its loyal water carriers in the mainstream media were quick to tout the 8.3 unemployment number in January, they have chosen to ignore Gallup's 9 percent unemployment report. Likewise, when the BLS releases its report in March and their silence is forced to be broken, anticipate their response to begin with the word "unexpectedly," to include conventional reminders that Obama "inherited" this mess and to be wrapped in the standard excuses of Republican obstructionism.