Old and busted: The Truth
The New Hotness: Lies
...or how to spin the employment disaster as goodness

The media has been trumpeting the "good news" that the "unemployment rate" has remained "unchanged" at a paltry 9.7%, right?

Well, when you dig a little deeper and look at the specifics of the actual BLS report, the picture is ummmm....somewhat different, and the supposed "gain" of 162,000 jobs turns out to be well...how to say this tactfully...a COMPLETE FRACKING LIE "optimistic".

Our media, that shining paragon of virtue, honesty, keepers of the public trust, with their multiple layers of fact checking, and hoards of deep thinking highly educated economic analysts, whose job it is to tell us what we're supposed to think, apparently failed to read past the first sentence of the report.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) increased by 414,000 over the month to 6.5 million. In March, 44.1 percent of unemployed persons were jobless for 27 weeks or more. (See table A-12.)

The civilian labor force participation rate (64.9 percent) and the employment-
population ratio (58.6 percent) continued to edge up in March. (See table A-1.)

The number of persons working part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) increased to 9.1 million in March. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job. (See table A-8.)

About 2.3 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in March, compared with 2.1 million a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were [presto changeo!] not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. [pull rabbit out of hat!]They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.)

Among the marginally attached, there were 1.0 million discouraged workers in March, up by 309,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.3 million persons marginally attached to the labor force had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities. (See table A-16.)

posted by Purp at 09:45 AM

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