By Rick Manning
“The monthly unemployment rate has become a meaningless statistic that
no longer reflects the reality of America’s economy or even the state of
our nation’s employment. Shockingly, the stated rate of 8.3 percent
does not include the 4.4 million Americans who have dropped out of the
labor force since Obama became president. When you include the
dropouts, the real Obama unemployment rate is 10.8 percent,” Bill
Wilson, President, Americans for Limited Government.
Each month, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics releases
the unemployment rate to the breathless anticipation of economic
analysts and politicians everywhere. As Wilson points out above, what
was once a pretty straightforward calculation has become the source of
controversy about whether it is even still a valid economic indicator.
One thing is clear, the unemployment rate no longer accurately reflects
the state of the U.S. employment situation as a stand-alone statistic
due to its failure to include vast numbers of Americans who no longer
are participating in the labor force as unemployed.
To understand how the Labor Department determines the unemployment rate
for the nation’s non-institutionalized civilian population and put it
into context is not difficult if you are aware of four pieces of the
unemployment puzzle: the non-institutionalized civilian population, the
labor participation rate, the number of Americans who are employed and
the number of people who classify themselves as “not in the labor
force.”
There are obviously other very important statistics like the number of
unemployed, which shows more than 12.8 million people who want a job and
can’t find one cannot be underestimated in terms of the human toll
being taken by Obama’s failed economy.
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