There is an old saying that has been attributed to Mark Twain, “Lies, damned lies, and statistics". There are other versions of this phrase attributed to Mark or someone else. One is, “Figures do not lie but liars do figure”. This phrase has been defined as describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments or cast doubt on an opponent’s arguments. I begin this writing with this information because there is no end to the data available regarding the unemployment rate, under employment rate, and the number of people in the work force in America. There is also no end to how these numbers can be “spun” for political purposes.
One indicator that the unemployment rate is well above 5 percent is the Labor Participation Rate. This data is the per cent of people in the population who are considered to be part of the work force and are actually working. Like most data and terms used by various government departments and special interest groups the exact definition of this term and how it is calculated varies. Regardless of how you calculate the per cent of people in the work force who are working the results indicate that on December 31, 2015 it was the lowest per cent it has been since the 1960’s. According to this data there are millions of people in America who still want to work but are not counted as being part of the work force now..

Another part of our work force that must be considered when you calculate the unemployment rate is the people who are underemployed. These are people who lost their jobs and had to take work that they are over qualified for or take part time work. I do not see how you can try and calculate the actual unemployment rate without considering these people. I am sure the vast majority of them are looking for full time work that they are qualified to do. Estimates as to how many of these people there are vary. One report I saw recently indicated it was 6.5 million.

Other data that must be considered when attempting to determine the size of the work force in America is the mortality rate. The number of people who die in America each year is a matter of record. But how many of them were still considered to be part of the work force when they died? Obviously this can be another “fuzzy” number.

What age people are considered to be out of the work force will also dramatically affect the calculated unemployment rate. Is it age 62, 65, or “and up”. I prefer the “and up” method because people in America are living longer and are more healthy and active in their later years than they were in the past. Some may change to a job with less stress or physical demands but they are still working much later in life.

Some people like to calculate the number of people in the work force in America to indicate that approximately 92,000,000 people are out of work. They count everyone in the population that is 16 years old “and up” as being part of the work force. They do not take people out of the calculation that are not in the work force by choice. Students, retired people, disabled people, or people who are taking time off work for personal or other reasons are counted as being in the workforce. If you take all these people out to make it a more reasonable calculation the unemployment number is still well above 5 percent.

Immigration also adds to our unemployment numbers. The US government issues over 1,000,000 visas every year but does not make any effort to see that the people leave when their visa expires or verify that they are doing what they were admitted to the US to do. My recent post “Legal (?) Immigration” covers this topic in detail.

As you can see it is easy to spin these numbers any way you want depending on your political agenda. I became interested in the numbers when I noticed that the Obama Administration appeared to be manipulating them to suit their agenda midway through his first term. The more I looked into it the more questions I had regarding how it was calculated by our Government.

As I have explained above there are just too many variables and estimated numbers for me to calculate an unemployment number that I am confident saying is the actual number. However, after all my research I am absolutely convinced that it is higher than 5 per cent. I am also certain that we cannot trust the Obama Administration to do anything about a problem that it insists it has already solved!

This chart, “Table A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization” Is an example of how he numbers are reported differently. It indicates that the unemployment rate in January of this year was 9.9 per cent while the Obama Administration was loudly saying they had lowered the unemployment rate to 4.9 per cent.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

We have ONE LAST chance to turn America around in November. Choose wisely!

PeterS, Thanks for the link. I had not seen that chart. According to it the unemployment rate was 9.9 in January. That was when the Obama Administration took a victory lap and claimed the unemployment rate was 4.9. As I am sure you know most economist believe that a 5 per cent unemployment rate is actually full employment. I am working on a writing now regarding what data I think should be considered when calculating the unemployment rate. I plan to post it on my website and probably here the first of next week.

This is one of the articles posted on my blog onlymakessemse.com
Some of you may remember the phrase “it’s the economy stupid”. It was coined by James Carville as a campaign theme in Bill Clinton’s 1992 P**********l campaign. As I was researching and writing this article it just seemed right to use it as the title since it seems even more appropriate today.

When you ask people in America what is most important to them they will almost always say the economy, security, and immigration are the things they are most concerned about, with the economy being by far the number one concern. I firmly believe that if you do not have a strong economy nothing else matters .It takes money to fund a strong national defense; to enforce a reasonable immigration policy, and to do anything else our Government tries to do. I used the term “tries to do” because Government does almost everything badly and spends more money doing it than any private enterprise would spend to do the same thing. Consequently as Government grows it spends more which adds to the downward pressure on our economy.
Here are some of the economic issues in America today:
The actual unemployment rate is not 5 per cent! I was “annoyed” when the Obama administration took a victory lap earlier this year when the monthly net new jobs report indicated that 151,000 jobs had been created the previous month and the unemployment rate was lowered to 4.9 per cent. I and a number of other people believe that it is probably around 10 per cent and that does not include all the people who are “under employed”. There is a lot of data available on this topic, including a number of US Government websites that indicate the unemployment rate is being manipulated to support the Obama Administration’s agenda. I will post a complete article on this topic in the future.
Our national debt is now more than $19,000,000,000,000 (yes, that is the correct number of “0”s). It will be more than $20,000,000,000,000 before the end of this year! At one point while we were getting to this unimaginable level of debt the Obama administration was taking a victory lap and saying, “we are reducing the deficit at the fastest rate since the end of WWII”, and I did not see anyone in the media call the administration out on that? I will post about this in more detail in a future article.
NO actual wage growth for years. In fact some reports indicate that median household annual income has fallen by $5,000 since 2007.
Here are some real life examples of what has been, and continues to happen around me (note, I live in an urban middle class area):
There are still a lot of abandoned homes and business locations sitting vacant.
People of all ages and races are walking on the side of the road and it is obvious that they are walking because they do not have any other means of getting where they need to go.
Panhandlers of all ages and races in places I have never seen panhandlers before.
Shelters, soup kitchens and food banks still have a high demand for their services.
Some restaurants and fast food locations tell me that they have people come in every day, say they are hungry and ask for free food.
Companies are outsourcing and cutting jobs at an accelerating rate. One recent example is a national company that outsourced, dramatically cut jobs and liquidated facilities in August 2015.
Cars left sitting along the highways and freeways because they are out of gas, have flat tires or they have mechanical failures. This is still happening in spite of the huge drop in gas prices, which means the money they are saving on gas has not raised their standard of living.
Increases in monthly housing rental cost. There are so many people who cannot qualify for or afford home ownership now that rental property owners are able to continually raise their rental rates.
Increased food prices while the size of the containers is decreasing (what was a half a gallon in the past is now 59 ounces).
What can we do to make things better? First, stop and take a good look at what is happening around you and listen to what people around you are saying. I do not believe you can do this and really believe the “Left’s” insistence that life has gotten better under the Obama administration. Not only have they not made life better, they are not telling you the t***h about what is really happening.
Second, try to engage people in rational, fact based conversations about what you think needs to be done to make things better. People who have an ideological mindset are not usually open to discussion so do not waste your time trying to have a conversation with them. There are other people that can be positively influenced so do your homework on issues and share your knowledge with them.
We have one last chance to turn America around in November. Electing a Socialist or Progressive Democrat as the President will not solve our problems!