Friday, January 06, 2012

Show Me The Carfax

From Salon.com we have a headline reading, “A jobs report to make the White House smile,” with a subhead to amplify that reading, “The U.S. economy added 200,000 jobs in December, and the unemployment rate fell to a three-year low.”

Let’s not bother to hold an election, let’s just name Obama to another term.

Oh, wait. Let’s look under the hood of the current employment report. In the last year, the civilian population rose by 1,695,000. Yet the labor force only rose by 274,000. Those “not in the labor force” rose by 1,421,000. If you have given up looking for work you are not “unemployed” and are not counted in that 8.5% unemployment number.

In December alone, while the unemployment rate dropped to “a three-year low,” those "not in the labor force" rose by a whopping 194,000, almost equaling the reported 200,000 new jobs. Civilian population increased by 143,000 people.

Boy, this economy is really humming right along.

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