Unemployment numbers are deceiving
Don’t let the new lower unemployment numbers fool you into thinking new jobs are being created at a rate that is truly meaningful. You have to remember how these “official” unemployment numbers are created in the first place.
They deliberately exclude those who have given up searching for jobs. They also exclude anyone working as little as even one hour per week, thus part-time employed are counted as employed. And they exclude anyone who is self-employed even though the person may have very little if any work to perform. Finally, don’t forget that these year end numbers include seasonal employment that will disappear as soon as the holidays are over.
Last November the unemployment rate dropped from 9 percent to 8.6 percent. That's good, right? Or is it really? The report showed that 120,000 new jobs were created. That’s good, isn’t it? The report didn’t put this in perspective by also explaining that over the past 10 years the U.S. has averaged more than 200,000 new births during each month. According to that, we need to add 200,000 jobs to just stay even with population changes.
Those who would have you believe jobs are actually being added also fail to mention it was estimated that last month alone 300,000 unemployed stopped looking for work and thus are no longer officially unemployed. So unemployment didn’t actually get better. The “official” rate got better, but the true number of folks out of work and suffering got worse.
The number of truly unemployed or underemployed is significantly larger than the “official” statistics cited. The best estimates I have been able to find show that the true number is over 20 million unemployed instead of the 14 million-plus so commonly shown. Also remember that this does not include their dependents, so the numbers are much higher than even the 20 million in terms of human beings in our country who are suffering from no job income.
I don’t think the government is simply trying to spin these unemployment statistics for political gain alone. While I do think that’s part of the reason for the message deception, perhaps the bigger reason is an attempt to send a message to consumers prior to the end of the holiday shopping season to encourage us to go ahead and spend money because things are looking up. This will, of course, stimulate the economy for the benefit of the producers of goods and services, but that is a very short-term effect that will result in primarily adding more personal debt for far too many.
My personal opinion is that we remain in a jobless recovery, and spinning the unemployment numbers to show otherwise is just another example of all of our leaders being focused on spinning every statistic in order to attempt to artificially stimulate the economy instead of taking the actions so needed to actually create the jobs that are so badly needed.
These are my opinions. What do you think?
Mike Tower
Hendersonville, NC
No comments:
Post a Comment