46 thoughts on “That “5.6% Unemployment Rate””

  1. Right now, as many as 30 million Americans are either out of work or severely underemployed.

    That’s 10 percent of the country, which makes it even higher for the labor force.

    Waiting for the Media Matter fan boys still in their Underoos to spin this.

  2. So how is the current state of our nation (resting on many such big lies) superior to Nazi Germany?

    We still may avoid the abyss. I hope we change. The German people were fundamentally as good as we are, but still got dragged down the drain.

  3. No, it’s brought to you by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the same people who reported the unemployment rate under past administrations, using the same formula. No, the U3 figure doesn’t tell you everything about the job market. Yes, it’s better to have U3 at 5.6% than at 6.5%, which is where it was a year ago.

    Fortune has a sober rebuttal to the Gallup piece.

    1. No, it’s brought to you by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the same people who reported the unemployment rate under past administrations, using the same formula.

      What’s your point? A misleading number is a misleading number, regardless of what administration it is provided by.

      1. What’s your point?

        My point is that your statement — “Brought to you by the people who said you could keep your doctor and your plan” — is false. The BLS never said anything about keeping your doctor and your plan.

        A misleading number is a misleading number

        It’s only misleading to people who don’t know anything about the way it’s calculated.

          1. It’s up there at the top: “The ‘5.6% Unemployment Rate’ It’s a Big Lie. Brought to you by the people who said you could keep your doctor and your plan.”

            Sure sounds like you’re saying the 5.6 number is a lie coming from Obama.

            As Jim points out, the 5.6% number is brought to us by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Not only Obama but numerous administrations have used the U3 figure.

            <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/republicans-play-three-card-monte-with-unemployment&quot;.Reagan's administration would also cite the BLS U3 number. Does that make Reagan a liar?

          2. I’m confused there Hop; Are you claiming that the Reagan administration BLS used U3 numbers when they claimed we could keep our doctor and our plan?

          1. “Brought to you by the people who said you could keep your doctor and your plan.”

            Funny, but when I read that I interpreted it as referring to People-in-Government (PIG).

    2. Why doesn’t the Labor Department just count all people without a job as unemployed? Because it wants to distinguish between the truly unemployed and those people who are, for instance, retired, or staying home to take care of the house or family while a spouse works. Counting these people as not part of the labor force is more accurate than saying that they are unemployed.

      I disagree that this is more accurate. There are plenty of ways to discourage people from working, such as putting them in jail, retiring them, having them just give up and stop looking for work, and/or put them through the education machine (both K-12 and higher education). They aren’t “truly employed” in the No True Scotsman sense, but they are people who could be contributing productively to society and just aren’t.

      And need I remind people that this is another opportunity to outright lie? Why should we trust numbers coming from the BLS?

        1. So in other words, Jim has no rational argument for trusting BLS.

          To Jim, not trusting the government word is some crazy idea, despite the governments claim that no guns were walked to Mexico before the government admitted they were, despite the claim that people would not lose their doctors and plans before the government admitted that would happen, and despite the claim by the government that GM paid back every dime of taxpayer money before the government admitted that they didn’t. I’m thinking that not trusting the government run by Obama is a good bet.

        2. Because there’s no non-tinfoil-hat reason not to.

          Conflict of interest. What did I win, Jim?

        3. Yes, be like Baghdad Jim! Trust Big Brother! Love Big Brother! Make its lies your lies! Because there is no truth except statist truth! Big Brother loves you!

    3. Heh. Love this from the rebuttal:
      “If you simply want to know what percentage of the population has a job versus those that don’t, there is a statistic for that too. It’s called the employment-to-population ratio. But that number tends to rise and fall for demographic and social reasons. It rose throughout the late 20th century, as women began to join the labor force in large numbers. And it is now trending downward, mostly because of the aging of the population.”
      Then look at the figure that accompanies it: around 63% for a couple of decades, then a devastating and very sudden drop to under 59% in 2008, and never came back up as much as a percentage point. That’s what he calls “trending downward”. “Mostly because of the aging of the population”, indeed. People age quickly during a recession.
      [If you see the reference he quotes, it brings the lack of recovery of participation rate as the proof that it’s because of the aging of the population etc. Because the economy has recovered, you see, so why else are they still out of a job?]

      I personally don’t blame someone who calculated U1-U6. I do blame anyone who claims that unemployment is _in any sense_ recovered. 4% of American workers lost their jobs and never came back.

      1. 4% of American workers lost their jobs and never came back.

        Or they retired (the oldest baby boomers hit 65 in 2011). The employment to population ratio never regained its 2000 peak under Bush; does that mean that the job market never recovered from the 2001 recession? The employment to population ratio is worth watching, but there’s more going on there than the health of the job market.

        1. I think that a glance at the graph will show that the comparison with Bush’s time is a real stretch. There may have been structural changes in the job market, but it is easy to understand that a few years out of work may have been a cause of retirement, not just an effect.

        2. It recovered a helluva lot better under Bush than it has under Obama, as high as the pre-bubble 1990’s. In fact, it hasn’t recovered hardly at all under Obama, and it fell a lot farther.

        3. “does that mean that the job market never recovered from the 2001 recession?”

          Isn’t that what Democrats claimed all through the Bush years and into the 2008 election? I noticed that line dropped off about a year into Obama’s term when he suddenly claimed he had no idea how bad the economy was. Sort of like after the Obamacare roll out debacle when he said he didn’t realize how complicated the health insurance industry is.

        4. “Or they retired (the oldest baby boomers hit 65 in 2011).”

          So, since the job losses started in 2008, are you suggesting that a bunch of Boomers started retiring at 62 _or even younger_, when they wouldn’t even be eligible for Social Security?

        5. Or they retired (the oldest baby boomers hit 65 in 2011). The employment to population ratio never regained its 2000 peak under Bush; does that mean that the job market never recovered from the 2001 recession? The employment to population ratio is worth watching, but there’s more going on there than the health of the job market.

          Two things to note. First, there’s no reason both MikeR and you can’t be right. Just because a bunch of people chose to retire, doesn’t mean that they would have chosen to retire in a healthy economy. Same goes for education and prison.

          Second, what makes you think that the US economy fully recovered from the 2001 recession? A permanent decline in labor participation (the above employment to population ratio) seems a strong indication that it hasn’t. It’s even worse with the current recession which shows remarkably slow labor recovery.

      2. I do blame anyone who claims that unemployment is _in any sense_ recovered

        That’s it. And no amount of media spin or White House spin will convince that 4% they now have a job when they don’t, or that they still work 40 hours when they don’t, or they are paid more now than 6 years ago when they are not.

    4. Here’s Jim’s cherry picking again. If I had a Fortune article showing just how misguided the Obamacare numbers were, he’d be howling. But since Fortune now agrees with him, he’s using it as a “sober rebuttal”.

  4. There used to be a time when people who dropped out of the workforce were counted as unemployed (because they are).

    Anyone can make a picture look rosy if they eliminate/ignore/wave away the bad stats. It’s called “lying”. Governments do this all the time and that’s one of the legion of reasons Big Government is very bad for your happiness.

  5. I won’t let the people retired comment stand. The one and ONLY demographic that is seeing its employment increase is the over 55 crowd. Its a great bit of propaganda to explain the numbers, but the reality is that the statement is false. 25 to 55 has seen a decline of 6M workers. and 55+ has seen an increase of 4.8M workers. Don’t spread or allow propaganda!

    http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2014/01/14/who_is_dropping_out_of_the_labor_force_and_why_100840.html

    1. “And that’s a bad thing? Who says so? The reactionary forces of Emmanuel Goldstein, no doubt! Liberty is overrated, anyway, Trust Big Brother–LOVE Big Brother!”–Baghdad Jim

  8. That’s okay, as soon as a Republican gets elected President, the media and Democrat Party (but I repeat myself) will start reporting the U6 number to show how unemployment “skyrocketed” due to Republican efforts. Because, you know, “greed.”

  9. This seems apropos:

    No politician wants unemployment going up on his watch, so over time, the methodology of calculating has changed. Add in disability fraud and unwanted retirement and the number would soar.

    What’s a “Realistic” Unemployment Rate?

    Based on demographic trends, I suggest the real unemployment rate after weeding out disability fraud, forced retirement, kids hiding out in school for lack of a job, and those who are not counted as unemployed simply because they gave up looking. Realistically, the unemployment rate is more like 9% than 7%.

    Clifton says the official unemployment rate of 5.6% is “The Big Lie”. I agree. The only dispute is the attempt to figure out “Just how big a lie is it?”

    Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2015/02/gallup-ceo-calls-56-unemployment-rate.html#fDoAdA78a80msJh1.99

  10. Another elephant in the room – the gargantuan accumulation of debt under Obama. What, exactly, do we have to show for all that spending?

    If Keynesianism is not now well and truly discredited for all time, then we can no longer lay claim to being a sentient species.

    1. Before the massive stimulus we had two decades of failed Keynsianism in Japan, and yet the fan boys still fell for it.

      I don’t think it’s a belief in the system as much as an excuse to spend! spend! spend!

      1. I would prefer the failed Keynesianism of Japan and the USA to the failed Monetarism we are having in the EU.

      2. You also forget that we got into this mess in the first place thanks to Alan Greenspan and his crew which weren’t Keynesians.

        1. I agree that the Monetarists are hopeless, too. Can we agree on both or are you just here to dis Greenspan?

        2. And no, we didn’t get into this mess only because of Greenspan. We got into this mess because we’ve strayed from basic classical liberal economics. Statism from the left or the right is still Statism and it still destroys economies.

          If you really want to place the blame, lets start with progressivism in 1913 and the beginning of the central bank known as the Fed. If we didn’t have the Fed, we wouldn’t have Greenspan or Keynes. Happy?

    2. I’m waiting for someone to remember the state of Social Security.

      And keep in mind, Obama has attacked the concept of saving at nearly every opportunity.

  11. All these arguments over what the “real” number miss is this – the BLS has consistently used the same standard to measure unemployment for decades. Whatever factors are or are not captured in that number have been consistent. The important factor is the trend.

    In other words, it doesn’t matter if your thermometer is 5 degrees off or 15 – it will still tell you the temperature is rising or falling.

  13. This administration has been constantly tweaking how the unemployment numbers are portrayed — much the same as with the inflationary rate numbers. Queue the Mark Twain quote about statistics. Not to mention all the revisions of the numbers that takes place after the initial quarterly announcements. The media announces with great fanfare that GDP rose only to then later have it quietly revised back downwards. And of course nothing but crickets from the media when this happens.

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