88 Million Unemployed

by Robert Heslin, for ElectionDebates.com

The Bureau of Labor Statistics claimed in its most recent report that 120,000 jobs were created and the unemployment rate fell to 8.2% from 8.3% in February. These are, superficially, hopeful statistics – the kind liberal politicians and their media cheerleaders might take heart from. But under Rush Limbaugh's closer scrutiny they don't hold up.

On Rush's May 4th broadcast, he dissected the country's new unemployment numbers to devastating effect:

• The U.S. unemployment rate went down one-tenth of a percent, from 8.2% to 8.1% – but the number of people who've left the labor force is at an all-time high.
  
  
• It has not been this high for this long since the Great Depression.
  
  
• If the US labor force was the same size today as it was when Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be 11% – not 8.1%.
  
  
• 8.1% is the U-3 number. It does not count people who've stopped looking for work.
  
  
• The labor force participation rate is 63.6%, a 30-year low.
  
  
• The U-6 number from the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- not typically reported by the media -- is a better measure of unemployment. It counts people who've stopped looking for work.
  
  
• The U-6 unemployment rate for April was unchanged – at 14.5%.
  
  
• Among the youthful idealists who were so crucial in electing Obama in 2008, joblessness is even higher – 15% to 20%.
  
  
• Twenty-five percent of jobseekers between the ages of 16 and 19 had no work in April, up from 23% in February.
  
  
• Youth unemployment has been above 23% for 34 months.
  
  
• There are currently 7.8 million workers working part-time for economic reasons.
  
  
• According to Reuters, hiring has decreased for the second straight month. The 120,000 added jobs reported by the BLS is in fact a paltry figure.
  
  
• For job creation in the U.S. national economy to begin to bring the country back to where it was economically before Obama took office (or, perhaps more importantly – before the Democrats took control of the House and Senate in 2006), it would have to exist at a level of around 500,000 jobs a month.
  
  
• For the country to experience real economic growth, we would have to be creating new jobs at rates of 600,000 to 700,000 a month.
  
  
• Only in the Orwellian world of government metrics can peoples' dropping out of the labor market translate to a lower unemployment rate and thus to a "healthier" economy.
  
  
• The U-3 unemployment rate of 8.1% breaks down like this:
  
  Men, 7.5%
  Women, 7.4%
  Teenagers, 24.9%
  Whites, 7.4%
  Blacks, 13.0%
  Hispanics, 10.3%
  Asians, 5.2%
  
  
• Even if we accept the government's statistics, the picture is bleak. Obama has extended his record of 8%-plus unemployment now to 39 consecutive months. It has not been this high, this long, since the Great Depression.
  
  
• To be brutally blunt: Obama's election strategy for getting the unemployment rate down is to kill jobs. Killing jobs reduces the labor participation rate, shrinks the universe of available jobs, and produces an artificial numerical reduction in the unemployment rate – which will then be trumpeted by the mainstream media in its effort to reelect Obama.
  
  
• On a related note, there's a relatively new phenomena going on: people applying for disability under Social Security. People whose unemployment benefits have expired are seeking assistance via SSDI, Social Security Disability Insurance. Their numbers are skyrocketing.
  
  
• Food stamp use is at a record high.
  
  
• The transformation from a capitalist market system to an authoritarian centralized welfare state thus continues. All the while Obama claims the job market is improving.
  
  
• Great injury is being done to the moral fiber of the country in the process.
  
  
• The U.S. population is roughly 311 million. Adults make up roughly 190 million of that total. The number of Americans out of work is 88 million.
  
  
• Eighty-eight million Americans are not in the labor force – but they're being subsidized. They're being paid for. They're eating. They're driving their cars. They're getting around. They're going to movies. They're making cell phone calls.
  
  
• Any political efforts to counteract this financially and socially destructive dynamic will be met with fierce and unrelenting demagoguery.
  
  
• Obama is paying the freight for people who don't want to work.
  
  
• Reality is the enemy to the Obama administration.

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