If you listen to the government Let look at two set of numbers … the ones the government spins and the real one from the BLS unspun …
The Employment Situation in March
While more work remains to be done, today’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to recover from the worst downturn since the Great Depression. It is critical that we continue the policies that are helping to build an economy that creates jobs and works for the middle class as we dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the severe recession that began in December 2007.
Today’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that private sector businesses added 95,000 jobs last month. Total non-farm payroll employment rose by 88,000 jobs in March. The February and March employment numbers were revised up by a total of 61,000 jobs. The economy has now added private sector jobs every month for 37 straight months, and a total of nearly 6.5 million jobs has been added over that period.
The household survey showed that the unemployment rate fell from 7.7 percent in February to 7.6 percent in March, the lowest since December 2008. The labor force participation rate decreased by 0.2 percentage point to 63.3 percent in March.
Meanwhile in the Real World …
People Not In Labor Force Soar By 663,000 To 90 Million, Labor Force Participation Rate At 1979 Levels
Things just keep getting worse for the American worker, and by implication US economy, where as we have shown many times before, it pays just as well to sit back and collect disability and various welfare and entitlement checks, than to work .The best manifestation of this: the number of people not in the labor force which in March soared by a massive 663,000 to a record 90 million Americans who are no longer even looking for work. This was the biggest monthly increase in people dropping out of the labor force since January 2012, when the BLS did its census recast of the labor numbers. And even worse, the labor force participation rate plunged from an already abysmal 63.5% to 63.3% – the lowest since 1979! But at least it helped with the now painfully grotesque propaganda that the US unemployment rate is “improving.”
Real March Unemployment Rate: 11.6%
Today, we got the laughable news that the unemployment rate declined even as those not in the labor force grew by over 660,000, while the total civilian non-institutional population grew by just 167,000 to 244,995, meaning the actual labor force declined by 496,000. Which is precisely the issue: fudging the labor force participation rate is how the Obama administration has managed to maintain the myth the economy has grown under his leadership for the past 4+ years. It hasn’t, and in fact if one renormalizes for the recent long-term average participation rate of 65.8%, one gets a very different number. How different? A difference that is now at a record compared to what is reported. As the chart below shows, a “renormalization” process indicates a massive and record 4% difference between the reported unemployment rate of 7.6%, and what the real unemployment rate is assuming normal growth of the labor force, which in March was 11.6%, up from 11.3% in February, and the highest since August 2012 when it was 11.7%. More importantly, as the real unemployment chart shows, the economy has not improved by one bit since 2009!
So while the government’s Ministry of Misinformation blows smoke up your bum … the facts from the land of reality that liberals hate so much are quite different.
