atomic_fungus (atomic_fungus) wrote,
atomic_fungus
atomic_fungus

#1927: The economy is not getting better.

They're playing numbers games to make the unemployment figure look better, but it's not.

Item: the Labor Department added 1,000,000 additional lost jobs to the unemployment figures, so we've actually lost 8,000,000-odd jobs rather than 7,000,000 during this recession.

Item: the figure which represents the pool of available jobs has been adjusted downward by the Labor Department. This makes unemployment look smaller.

Item: the figure which has improved is U3, which is the number of people actively looking for work and collecting unemployment benefits. U6 has not changed; it is still around 17.5%. If there were jobs being created, U6 would have also decreased.

Item: U3 also gets smaller when people use up their unemployment benefits and drop off the unemployment insurance rolls.

Item: the federal government is hiring census workers right now, and will hire a total of about a million people. These are temporary jobs that won't last more than a few months but will take some people off of U3 and/or U6.

Item: unemployment is still increasing.

Sorry, Obama-troids; I don't buy it.
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