Really believe that unemplyment is 5.4%? It' nearly double

Cool story bro.

Don't blame Obama for not having a job slacker.

The number is correct, but you have to remember that it only reflects those looking for jobs. We are record levels of people who have simply given up and are no longer looking for work. Instead, they are on government assistance.

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics"

Back to full employment. Thank you, Mr. President.

Fake numbers wrote:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102694868

In CA the true number statewide is 20% - people are leaving every day while the illegals keep flooding in per our "alien" controlled government.

That's what you get when you have a liberal run media

"Overall, nearly 1 in 5 (19 percent) said they spent no time looking for work in the week previous to the survey. "

Hard to find a job when you can't be bothered to look for one...

The method for calculating official unemployment has not changed. What has changed is whether there is a Democrat in the White House. Conservatives don't care about the unemployment rate unless a Democrat is President. Of course, those are also the times when the unemployment is, on average, much lower than under Republicans. GDP growth is also better and the budget deficit smaller under Democrats, and the same is true for Obama vs. your hero Bush.

The calculations used were introduced in 1994 by Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor.

- People with jobs are employed.

- People who are jobless, looking for a job, and available for work are unemployed.

- The labor force is made up of the employed and the unemployed.

- People who are neither employed nor unemployed are not in the labor force.

So people who are retired are not in the labor force. This is news?

Hello, McFly? wrote:

So people who are retired are not in the labor force. This is news?

Also people who are not actively looking for work, and people on disability (whose numbers have swelled enormously in recent years).

Some people on here are extremely stupid. The unemployment rate and labor force participation rate are not new concepts and pre-date 1994. If you want to examine both go to the bls.gov. In the last 45 years the participation rate has ranged from 59% to roughly 67.5%. Right now is not any different. If you examine the trend in the LF participation rate it has less to do with the economy and more to do with the current trend of retirement of the baby boomers which started around 1998. They actually have retirement/savings so less of them need to be a part of the LF after they retire. If you go back even farther the current rate of participation is higher than the 'golden eras' of the 40's-60's. So the notion that all of a sudden people are behaving differently now than in history is incorrect.

So the 'real' unemployment rate and how economists measure it has not changed and is not new. The notion that our LF participation rate is some how lower than our entire history is also false.

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

Liberals also don't understand how someone who quit 7 jobs in a single year can claim to have a strong work ethic.

The government is always changing the way it arrives at its metrics for Unemployment, GDP and so forth. It's justification is that if Americans think the economy is good, they will spend more and that will grow the economy. Lol!

False.