RSSInside the 9.7% unemployment numbers
J.J. Jackson | February 5, 2010
Good news America! Unemployment is down! That is what people who are destroying our nation’s economy want you to hear!
The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced today that the unemployment rate for January 2010 dropped to 9.7%. Happy days are here again. Right?
Wrong. Let us look at the numbers and you will see that things are not better … but at least the government can get you away from being distracted by a double digit unemployment number.
In fact, here are the numbers that should matter if people cared.
-3,064,000 fewer Americans are in the labor force than just one year ago.
The participation rate in the economy is just 64.7% which is just 0.1% better than December 2009, 0.2% worse than November 2009 and a full 1.0% worse than one year ago. Ergo the employment situation is not better than it was just a few months back.
-The employment-population ratio is 0.2% better than December 2009 but 0.1% worse than November 2009.
-More and more people are staying unemployed for 27 weeks or longer. In January 2009 just 22% of Americans who were unemployed were at or over this mark. In January 2010 that number has almost doubled to 41%
Then of course there is a number no one wants to focus on which is the unemployment rate among blacks in America. In January 2010 that number continued to increase to 16.5% (from 16.2% in December, from 15.6% in November and from 12.8% one year ago).
They can play with the numbers and find ways to make things look rosy but you can coat a turd with chocolate too and I still wouldn’t eat it.
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