America’s Unemployment Rate: The Reality

By now you should realize that our government officials lie to us with abandon. They have to or we would rebel (or, at least, in theory we would). They hide things like where they get their money for their campaigns (thank goodness for entities such as OpenSecrets.org). They lie about their intentions and plans for their constituents. They use a media to gloss over their lies and generally the worst come out on a Friday evening because they know that most Americans will be too busy watching football, playing golf or spend their money at malls to pay attention to what they did.

And it is true with almost every subject you can think of. The only time they actually use the truth is if it is expedient for them to do so (and then they will taint it to bolster their view or ideology). There simply is little to NO truth in the vast majority of these pricks and the propaganda arms they are supported by. World Prout has a ditty by Steve Clemons of the Washington Note that delves into the real Unemployment numbers and how we are being told HALF truths. In that article, Steve quotes from Leo Hindery’s monthly update on “America’s effective unemployment rate”, which breaks down the underemployed and those that can’t find a job and are tired of looking:

Here is a June 2009 version of the summary that calculates the Effective Unemployment Rate, which is now 18.70%, and the Effective Number of Unemployed, which is now 30,172,000.

There are currently 14,729,000 officially unemployed workers, as just announced. However, this figure does not include the combined 15,443,000 workers either (1) in the “labor force reserve” because they have abandoned their job searches (i.e., 4,278,000) or (2) underemployed because they are “part-time of necessity” (i.e., 8,989,000) or “otherwise marginally attached” (i.e., 2,176,000).

The effective unemployment rate is therefore 18.70%, instead of the official 9.51%.

And you know what? That fits my own little poll in my small town, except there are likely closer to 25% who are underemployed/tired of looking/out of a job because there are none.

Look around you and 1 in 5 people are not working or not making enough to get by. Maybe they are working several part time jobs with none giving health care assistance.

The point is that these numbers are going up. The fact of the matter is that we must provide over 125,000 jobs per month just to keep up with the rise in population. However, we have been shedding 2 to 3 times that regularly for  a very long time. And there is no real end in sight. As a matter of fact, the employment sector is expected to be the last one to come back around (which seems like putting the cart before the horse).

If you are losing 400,000 + jobs a month AND we are not generating the 125,000 just to keep up, we are essentially over a 1/2 Million jobs short per MONTH.

Thank goodness I have my garden…