Unemployment rate down?

In a delightfully frothy piece by the NYT; http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42388296/ns/business-us_business by Jackie Calmes the assertion is made that the (heavily doctored) NFP Unemployement Rate figures released yesterday by the BLS allow the Resident new lattitude in his dealings with Congressional Republicans and add new force to the Left's arguments against further budget cuts.The direction of the article was underlined by the sub-title which is a quote from NY senator Chuck Schumer "This sign of jobs growth shows the president’s economic plan is starting to work" (oddly in the subtitle he is alluded to as a "democratic senator").

So, four trillion dollars into the recovery program (not to mention a somewhat larger expansion of the money supply) and we add 216,000 jobs. It doesn't seem like an effective return on investment to me. The worst part about this "good news" is that this is still way below the rate needed to get back to the 2007 rate of employment, back when Obama was running for office and decrying the horrible jobs situation, that would need just under a quarter of a million jobs each and every month from now until November 2012. Not bloody likely.

Looking deeper into the statistics you see how bad it REALLY is; Labor Force Participation (64.2% of available adults, a grand total number of 140 million people with some sort of job, never mind the guy who is working two part-time jobs getting double counted) is at an all-time low for the last quarter century and is trending downward at a steep angle. Underemployment is at 15.7%. The average work-week is at 33 hours, which means that there are a lot of people working at part-time jobs rather than normal employment.

Another little data point that is not highlighted (but should be) is the nebulous term "Not In Labor Force" which describes the persons of working age that, for some reason or other, are not included in the persons who are not employed. This month's number is 85,594,000, that is bigger than the population of most of the countries on Earth, it is also MUCH larger than the number from last year at this same time; 83,264,000. So, somewhere along the line, the Government moved two million of those inconvienient "unemployed people" out of the labor force and into Not In Labor Force column. A nifty bit of accounting trickery.  Just delete 1.5% of the work-force per year and unemployemnt goes down! I can't wait until ObamaCare jumps into the picture to help get some more of us out of the way and we can really see some reduction in unemployment (as well as that whole Social Security/Medicare burden thing).

One other thing that you need to keep in mind is that, once again despite the glowing jobs picture, the Treasury reports ever lower collections from income taxes on individuals. This means that there is less income being earned by US citizens, seems that those were not good paying jobs that were created.

A wise man once said this;

"Statistics are like a drunk with a lampost: used more for support than illumination."

When a politican, or some journo-hack with an editor's agenda in mind, starts quoting stats you want to check what it is they are supporting, and what it is they are pretending to illuminate.

End Note: Foodstamp use by US citizens is now at an all-time high with 44 million people (that is 13 out of every 100 people) collecting Uncle Sam's contribution to the Bread and Circuses Program (now all they have to do is find a summer substitute of American Idol).