90,000,000 Americans have given up looking for work

[Starbuck]

Whatever the right number is, we all know that if it's bad, it's somehow Bush's fault.

Yeah, that's gonna be a tough one in the debates. See, when Bush took over there were 131 million jobs and when he left there were 137 million jobs. Now we're back to 131 million. Gee, Barry, what'd ya do with all those jobs I left you with?.....
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.ceseeb1.txt

[linda22003]

It's a total of people NOT in the labor force, not people who have given up looking for work. My father is not in the labor force. It's not because he can't find a job, it's because he's almost 92 years old and he's really not interested.

[Odysseus]

It's a total of people NOT in the labor force, not people who have given up looking for work. My father is not in the labor force. It's not because he can't find a job, it's because he's almost 92 years old and he's really not interested.

I went into the breakdown of the numbers above. Discouraged workers are a portion of those people not in the labor force, and their status is basically the government's way of excluding them from the official unemployment rate. The critical numbers are 137 million, which is the number of jobs in the US at the start of Obama's term, and 131 million, which is the current number. Obama has to explain where those six million jobs went.

[Arroyo_Doble]

I went into the breakdown of the numbers above. Discouraged workers are a portion of those people not in the labor force, and their status is basically the government's way of excluding them from the official unemployment rate. The critical numbers are 137 million, which is the number of jobs in the US at the start of Obama's term, and 131 million, which is the current number. Obama has to explain where those six million jobs went.

This is a link by month: The Link

In January of 2009, the number was 133,561,000. March of 2012 was at 132,821,000.

Not quite 6 million.

[Hawkgirl]

Expect the numbers to get much worse once the full effect of Obamacare is seen. The healthcare field, once the most stable of industries, is going to take a massive hit. The unintended consequence of Obamascare.

[Janice]

Obama’s cooked jobs books
Fudging the official unemployment rate isn’t working

In March, 120,000 jobs were created, while more than 330,000 people dropped out of the workforce. For self-serving reasons, the Obama administration spins this as good news.

According to government math, March unemployment declined by .1 percent even though more Americans were out of work. This is because the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) doesn’t count people as officially unemployed if they are not looking for a job. So even though the “not in labor force” figure is at a record high of nearly 88 million people, the administration can keep reporting a drop in unemployment by counting only those it wants to count.

A growing number of analysts are realizing that these subjective government figures don’t reflect reality in the workplace. An analysis from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch Global Research shows that the percentage of employed Americans has basically flatlined for the past two years while the reported unemployment rate has been dropping. This is unprecedented; these two figures have reliably tracked together for at least the past 20 years. The only reason they have decoupled recently is because the Obama administration has stopped counting millions of out-of-work Americans as part of the official workforce. This widening gap is the smoking gun behind the phony unemployment numbers.

Election-year politics have something to do with the growing disconnect. A January report that appeared in the Zero Hedge website noted that if the logic of reporting progressively fewer labor-force participants continued, “America will officially have no unemployed when the Labor Force Participation rate hits 58.5 percent, which should be just before the presidential election.” Three months later, the trend continues. >>>

The government naturally wants to put as good a face on the ostensible recovery as possible, but the official unemployment figures are painfully out of step with reality. If three Americans are quitting the workforce for every one who finds a job, this is not a recovery. It is a national jobs crisis.

Washington Times

Meanwhile the GOP leadership rather than call these clowns out, continue to act like the band playing on the Titanic (America) as it descends into a watery grave it may never recover from.

[Arroyo_Doble]

The only reason they have decoupled recently is because the Obama administration has stopped counting millions of out-of-work Americans as part of the official workforce. This widening gap is the smoking gun behind the phony unemployment numbers.

Is the Washington Times arguing that the BLS has changed their method of calculating the unemployment numbers?

[Starbuck]

Is the Washington Times arguing that the BLS has changed their method of calculating the unemployment numbers?

I think you know the answer to that one, but then you always know the answer to every 'question' that you ask. Fine for court room attorneys; a little irritating from you.

Perhaps we (you and I) can agree that the method of calculating unemployment figures is more typical of a bureaucrat than a pragmatist and leaves lots of room for interpretation. And interpretation is really what the article is about.
In fact, the whole affair reminds me of trying to interpret The Bible; one person goes this way, another, that.

Almost everyone in America agrees that the employment situation is woefully inadequate, and has resulted in an unemployment situation that will ruin a great many people. It is bad.
We need 150 million jobs in America to make the economic engine run without sputtering. And that's a fact.

In January of 2009, the number was 133,561,000. March of 2012 was at 132,821,000.

Oops. You're right. I got on the wrong column.
Not to wriggle out from underneath my mistake, but it is also a fact that Americans are expanding the workforce by the amount of 1.5 million people per year. So now we have 18 million more people to employ in 2012 than we did in 2000.

The employment situation is bad, "Dooble". Bad. Two branches of government have it within their power to correct it, and we are getting very little from either branch that is not spin. And the problem with spin, of course, is that it goes nowhere.

[Arroyo_Doble]

I think you know the answer to that one, but then you always know the answer to every 'question' that you ask. Fine for court room attorneys; a little irritating from you.

Perhaps we (you and I) can agree that the method of calculating unemployment figures is more typical of a bureaucrat than a pragmatist and leaves lots of room for interpretation. And interpretation is really what the article is about.
In fact, the whole affair reminds me of trying to interpret The Bible; one person goes this way, another, that.

You have to compare results using the same method for there to be any validity to numbers. If the BLS has suddenly changed the method for calculating unemployment, that is pretty damn big and needs to be addressed. If they haven't, and we are comparing valid numbers, then what is the Washington Times trying to say? Are they arguing that they want to change the method for calculating unemployment? If so, should we do so retroactively?

Almost everyone in America agrees that the employment situation is woefully inadequate, and has resulted in an unemployment situation that will ruin a great many people. It is bad.
We need 150 million jobs in America to make the economic engine run without sputtering. And that's a fact.

Oops. You're right. I got on the wrong column.
Not to wriggle out from underneath my mistake, but it is also a fact that Americans are expanding the workforce by the amount of 1.5 million people per year. So now we have 18 million more people to employ in 2012 than we did in 2000.

I agree that the employment situation isn't where it needs to be. I would also like to know how the front end of the Boomer generation retiring is affecting it. There was a report I read (economic opinion piece I could find if you like ... but it was opinion) that stated our problem in the near future will be a shrinking labor force.

Also, if you look at the BLS link, you will see that the growth in jobs mostly occurred during the 90's. The Aughts were a lost decade.

The employment situation is bad, "Dooble". Bad. Two branches of government have it within their power to correct it, and we are getting very little from either branch that is not spin. And the problem with spin, of course, is that it goes nowhere.

And it makes you dizzy.

[Odysseus]

Is the Washington Times arguing that the BLS has changed their method of calculating the unemployment numbers?

That's exactly what they are saying. The article notes that the administration is creating ficticious jobs that are not reflected in the household survey, but they are doing more than that. In in order to understand the change, you have to understand the different calculations. The BLS uses six measures of Unemployment. They are:

• U1:[88] Percentage of labor force unemployed 15 weeks or longer.
• U2: Percentage of labor force who lost jobs or completed temporary work.
• U3: Official unemployment rate per the ILO definition occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively looked for work within the past four weeks.[1]
• U4: U3 + "discouraged workers", or those who have stopped looking for work because current economic conditions make them believe that no work is available for them.
• U5: U4 + other "marginally attached workers", or "loosely attached workers", or those who "would like" and are able to work, but have not looked for work recently.
• U6: U5 + Part time workers who want to work full time, but cannot due to economic reasons (underemployment).

By revising the criteria by which the U3 is created, the BLS can adjust the rate up or down. They've done this by manipulating the Labor Participation Rate by increasing the number of "discouraged" workers arbitrarily. Here was how they calculated the drop to 8.2% last January:

The number of unemployed people reportedly dropped by 128k from October to November. Add this to the 200k less employed persons and the total comes to 328k less people employed in November than in October.

So where does the 0.2% decrease in unemployment come from?

Those listed as "Not in labor force" increased by 419k people from October to November. The "Civilian labor force" reported by BLS has decreased by 339k from October to November.

Subtract the 328k loss in employment from the 419k loss to the labor force and you end up with 91k, which is 0.14% of the labor force reported in November.

The remainder of the difference can be chalked up to using more exact figures than the rounded off numbers provided by the BLS and then rounding up the percentage. The figures given have all been rounded to the nearest thousand.

Another inaccuracy in the figures is that Table A-15 shows the "official unemployment rate" as 8.6% for November, down from 9% in October, while Table A-2 has the figure at 8.3% and 8.5% respectively.

With this in mind, consider the figures from September to October, where there was reportedly a gain in employment of 198k jobs and a loss of only 41k reported "Not in labor force". The BLS also reports a 0.2% decrease in unemployment from September to October, exactly the same as from October to November.
http://voices.yahoo.com/obama-admini...-10762803.html

The arbitrary reductions in the labor force are how they keep the U3 number down.