The Big Lie. The truth about unemployment numbers.

[CCTAU]

Most of us already know this.

The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment
Feb 3, 2015

Here’s something that many Americans -- including some of the smartest and most educated among us -- don’t know: The official unemployment rate, as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, is extremely misleading.

Right now, we’re hearing much celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street about how unemployment is “down” to 5.6%. The cheerleading for this number is deafening. The media loves a comeback story, the White House wants to score political points and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market.

None of them will tell you this: If you, a family member or anyone is unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a job -- if you are so hopelessly out of work that you’ve stopped looking over the past four weeks -- the Department of Labor doesn’t count you as unemployed. That’s right. While you are as unemployed as one can possibly be, and tragically may never find work again, you are not counted in the figure we see relentlessly in the news -- currently 5.6%. Right now, as many as 30 million Americans are either out of work or severely underemployed. Trust me, the vast majority of them aren’t throwing parties to toast “falling” unemployment.

There’s another reason why the official rate is misleading. Say you’re an out-of-work engineer or healthcare worker or construction worker or retail manager: If you perform a minimum of one hour of work in a week and are paid at least $20 -- maybe someone pays you to mow their lawn -- you’re not officially counted as unemployed in the much-reported 5.6%. Few Americans know this.

Yet another figure of importance that doesn’t get much press: those working part time but wanting full-time work. If you have a degree in chemistry or math and are working 10 hours part time because it is all you can find -- in other words, you are severely underemployed -- the government doesn’t count you in the 5.6%. Few Americans know this.

There’s no other way to say this. The official unemployment rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed, amounts to a Big Lie.

And it’s a lie that has consequences, because the great American dream is to have a good job, and in recent years, America has failed to deliver that dream more than it has at any time in recent memory. A good job is an individual’s primary identity, their very self-worth, their dignity -- it establishes the relationship they have with their friends, community and country. When we fail to deliver a good job that fits a citizen’s talents, training and experience, we are failing the great American dream.

Gallup defines a good job as 30+ hours per week for an organization that provides a regular paycheck. Right now, the U.S. is delivering at a staggeringly low rate of 44%, which is the number of full-time jobs as a percent of the adult population, 18 years and older. We need that to be 50% and a bare minimum of 10 million new, good jobs to replenish America’s middle class.

I hear all the time that “unemployment is greatly reduced, but the people aren’t feeling it.” When the media, talking heads, the White House and Wall Street start reporting the truth -- the percent of Americans in good jobs; jobs that are full time and real -- then we will quit wondering why Americans aren’t “feeling” something that doesn’t remotely reflect the reality in their lives. And we will also quit wondering what hollowed out the middle class.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-lie-56-unemployment-jim-clifton

[GarMan]

I just share this.  It hasn't been this bad since the Carter years... 

[Token]

I'm no fan of Obama, but unemployment is more on the unemployed than it is the presidential administration.   Motherfuckers are lazy and don't want to work, nor do they know how to keep a job. Not all, but most.

[smooth_operator]

I'm no fan of Obama, but unemployment is more on the unemployed than it is the presidential administration.   Motherfudgeers are lazy and don't want to work, nor do they know how to keep a job. Not all, but most.

Yeah I'm sure some hardworking dudes have lost their jobs when the factory closed or whatever, but the real drag comes from those that are content to not work at all.

[GarMan]

Yeah I'm sure some hardworking dudes have lost their jobs when the factory closed or whatever, but the real drag comes from those that are content to not work at all. 

It's not just that they're content to not work; they're encouraged to stay out of work in a number of cases.  The "War on Poverty" has been a complete failure because we continue to reward poor behavior rather than addressing the real problems. 

[GarMan]

Then, there's this...

[Kaos]

Interviewed a guy two weeks ago.  Was laid off in December by a company after he'd worked there 27 freaking years.  Could have retired two years ago but didn't.  Now laid off.  Got 90 days severance.  The company retirement he'd been promised?  Not sure he's ever going to see it.  Don't know the details.  Don't care.

He's got an archaic skill set.  Codes in a language that's essentially dead.  But I have a specific need to transfer some pieces of an old system in that language into a new version. 

I don't need him full time.  I need 20-25 hours a week.  I offered him what I thought was more than fair for part time work in something that nobody else is going to hire. 

Turned me down.  Would prefer to get his free Obama care and his unemployment benefits and supplement those with his savings and severance until he can get a "real job."  I asked what a "real job" would entail.  He says -- and keep in mind his skill set is pretty much useless outside the small project two or three year project I need -- he's going to need $150k or more plus a healthy benefits package or he can't consider it. 

So fuck him.  When reality hits in six months or so I'll look him up again.  But it'll be deal or no deal.  My offer be significantly reduced.  He picked the wrong briefcase. 

[smooth_operator]

Interviewed a guy two weeks ago.  Was laid off in December by a company after he'd worked there 27 freaking years.  Could have retired two years ago but didn't.  Now laid off.  Got 90 days severance.  The company retirement he'd been promised?  Not sure he's ever going to see it.  Don't know the details.  Don't care.

He's got an archaic skill set.  Codes in a language that's essentially dead.  But I have a specific need to transfer some pieces of an old system in that language into a new version. 

I don't need him full time.  I need 20-25 hours a week.  I offered him what I thought was more than fair for part time work in something that nobody else is going to hire. 

Turned me down.  Would prefer to get his free Obama care and his unemployment benefits and supplement those with his savings and severance until he can get a "real job."  I asked what a "real job" would entail.  He says -- and keep in mind his skill set is pretty much useless outside the small project two or three year project I need -- he's going to need $150k or more plus a healthy benefits package or he can't consider it. 

So fudge him.  When reality hits in six months or so I'll look him up again.  But it'll be deal or no deal.  My offer be significantly reduced.  He picked the wrong briefcase.

As absurd as this story seems, he's got roughly 27 working years on the folks I'm talking about. Folks who seem to make a lucrative career out of "standing around outside the gas station" and "oops, had another baby". 

[Kaos]

As absurd as this story seems, he's got roughly 27 working years on the folks I'm talking about. Folks who seem to make a lucrative career out of "standing around outside the gas station" and "oops, had another baby".

There were lots of reasons I got out of the furniture business back in the mid 90s.  One was because of this kind of thing.  I was with some of my new delivery guys watching them install a washer and dryer in an "apartment" in Crescent East in Tuscaloosa when I heard the mother tell her high school age daughter that she couldn't afford for her to live there no more unless she had another baby.  They need that one more check to survive.  Telling that unmarried kid she needed to pop out another baby so they could get a "raise" was unfathomable to me. 

I routinely cashed 'first of the month' checks for parents who spent the money on TVs, stereos, VCRs and appliances while their kids did without medicine, clothes and food.

We were rent-to-own so I got to see things that most of you have never considered. I've repo-ed stereo speakers so full of roaches that there wasn't room for the woofers to resonate.  I've opened microwaves and refrigerators that were the same.  I once burned a couch that the customer refused to make payments on because it was so nasty and greasy that I didn't want it back in my store.  Burned it at her curb.  She'd made one payment of $80 and then hid for nearly six months while I tried every single day to get her to open the door. I used to make collection runs through the heart of the projects (usually carrying a gun).  I've seen how that part of the world lives.  It's nothing like you see on TV.

They get free or subsidized housing and have no respect for it.  Trash it and then bitch because it's not good enough.  The inside of those places -- with a few exceptions -- are horrifying.  Filth you cannot comprehend. Lack of respect for any of it.

 It's an entire generation -- now into a third generation -- that lives entirely off the system, contributes nothing and feels entitled to everything just because they see other people who work for those things having them.  It's a growing subculture that's emboldened by a "never worked" president who babbles about everybody getting a "fair shot."  When this level of society hears "fair shot" they take that to mean "give me the same things them rich folks have."  Cell phone isn't a luxury, it's a right. Car? Entitled to that. Free education. Free health care. Free! Give me, give me, give me.  Without any consideration whatsoever for where it comes from. 
 

Why should someone who is on public assistance, refuses to work and relies on help to get by feel they deserve a big screen TV?  Yet they do.  It's why my store made thousands and thousands a month.  Paid off a quarter million loan in less than a year.   It's why Aarons makes billions. Why Rent-a-Center can hire Hulk Hogan and Troy Aikman to shill for it. 


You say those people should get jobs, but what's the incentive?  They go to work at McDonalds making minimum wage and suddenly they can't survive.  When you look at the numbers it actually costs them money to work when you consider the "free benefits" they lose.  It's the government plan.  The more people you make rely on the government the more people you control when it comes to the vote.

I made money off that sub-culture but had trouble sleeping.  So I sold my stores.   I know that's a different topic than unemployment but all I see is government taking more and more from the fewer of us who are willing to work and giving it to those who can't or won't.  At some point the balance is going to tip. 

[Saniflush]

Agree 100% with your take, I guess what I have always thought about how do you instill or revive someones pride in standing on their own two feet?  I can't imagine a day coming that if I am able to function that I could not find a way to earn a living.  I don't even mean the living I make now now a surviving living.

I have sat down plenty of times and done the math to ensure that I could make it easily on a hell of a lot less than what I have now.  I think most people have just forgotten that they don't need that much "stuff" or really the difference between need and want.

[AUJarhead]

Agree 100% with your take, I guess what I have always thought about how do you instill or revive someones pride in standing on their own two feet?  I can't imagine a day coming that if I am able to function that I could not find a way to earn a living.  I don't even mean the living I make now now a surviving living.

I have sat down plenty of times and done the math to ensure that I could make it easily on a hell of a lot less than what I have now.  I think most people have just forgotten that they don't need that much "stuff" or really the difference between need and want.

I believe in work.  Hard work.

[WiregrassTiger]

Agree 100% with your take, I guess what I have always thought about how do you instill or revive someones pride in standing on their own two feet?  I can't imagine a day coming that if I am able to function that I could not find a way to earn a living.  I don't even mean the living I make now now a surviving living.

I have sat down plenty of times and done the math to ensure that I could make it easily on a hell of a lot less than what I have now.  I think most people have just forgotten that they don't need that much "stuff" or really the difference between need and want.

[Saniflush]

I can't wait to use my special purpose.

[AUJarhead]

I can't wait to use my special purpose.

He hates these cans!