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The numbers are calculated the same way as they have been for over 50 years. If they don't reflect what you want them to reflect, just watch Beck or listen to Rush or whatever, where you can see and hear what you want. Thus you can feel vindicated in your confusion.
I'd like to know also, did they use cutesy little tricks to make the number look swell, like they are doing today?
How many people were considered to represent the total US work force, when employment stats were calculated in 2008? I think I read somewhere that since 0bama has become president the number of people considered to represent the US work force has shrunk to below 1990 numbers.
It most certainly did. They changed who is counted as unemployed. They changed it to count part time workers who weren't previously counted as employed.
You can work 8 hours a week, live off food stamps, Medicaid and government housing and be counted in with the employed. That change was made in 1994.
The Clinton administration chose to modify the way unemployment would be counted because he wanted to make NAFTA look like a great thing and so of course could not show the truth of what effect it had on American unemployment.
This definition conveniently excludes from the definition of unemployed those who have grown so discouraged that they are only marginally looking for work, as well as those who are considered under-employed because they have been forced to accept part-time or lower paying full-time employment because no other jobs are available.
Real Unemployment in March 2011 was 22.0 Percent, Not 8.8 Percent - (http://jeromecorsi.com/article.php?id=71 - broken link)
That bolded statement has an awful lot of wiggle room in it.
I'll wager that there are a lot of people who are absolutely certain that they're being paid less than what they're worth. But a job's a job...regardless of whether you think you deserve more in pay.
We are discussing 2 things here, not just one. U6 is the comparison, to U1 that we are discussing. Get up to speed please, or you become the disruption.
That broader unemployment rate, or U-6, is up from 16.4% a year ago and from 9.7% in May 2008. It was 7.1% in May 2000.
Look around on the C-D forums, and see for yourselves about the unemployment impacts.
A fellow in Colorado has to go out every week and run squatters off of his ranchland that borders highways, because people moved there following the bright lights of Denver and still couldn't find jobs or even housing. People begging for jobs on the Las Vegas forum. People moving from state to state, getting poorer with each move, going to the latest touted city or state with low unemployment figures, and finding out that the jobs have all been taken by locals - which is why the figures are so low. A fellow moved from GA to SD and was angry because he couldn't find a trucking job, his wife couldn't find a customer service job, and within three months they were looking elsewhere. People packing up and moving from the Northeast to the Southwest, to Montana, to Idaho and Utah, so positive that there must be jobs somewhere that they won't even listen to sound advice before they pack that car and flee, arms wide open, expecting to be met with appreciation for their self-vaunted skills. People posting that they are moving from the North to Florida, insisting that there MUST be jobs there, there are so many people there who need their particular talents. It goes on and on... the pathetic desperation is evident. And C-D is just a tiny microcosm of what is happening nationwide.
When I signed onto C-D in 2007, there was not this desperation; one could have rational discussions about what different places were like, what jobs were and were not available, what people were like in different towns, cities, and states. Many of the people with whom I chatted and even struck up friendships were helpful and positive. (Of course, we were not buying a pig in a poke - we weren't coming to be a drain on taxpayers, but to buy a home and participate in the community we chose.) Now many long-time residents are fed up with the posters who insist that they are moving to their locale, no matter what - and expect the locals to succor them, provide them with jobs and homes and good schools, when the locals are having a hard enough time paying their own bills.
It has nothing to do with any particular political regime - it has a lot to do with what has been happening in this country for over 70 years, from all sides of the political spectrum, and we are now seeing the impacts of those poor decisions. There is no quick fix, and there is no politician who can leap to the fore and say, "I WILL SAVE YOU!" - because it will take time and further decline before people realize what has been done to them by the very people they trusted with their votes and passions.
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