If you want just the central piece of it, here you go:
Stanley Greenberg, James Carville's partner, big-time Democrat pollster, last couple of weeks puts a pull out and says: Mr. President, don't go to town on this big story of a reviving, roaring-back economy because it isn't going to work. They're not feeling it. The reason a story based on a virtual economic recovery won't work is because people are living in the economy.
And they don't have jobs, and the jobs they're getting are not career jobs. A lot of the jobs that were added in this report are people taking second jobs. Our old buddy, the old reliable James Pethokoukis, is occasionally published at Reuters (we'll forgive him for that) and is also a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He says if we're gonna compare, let's compare apples to apples. "If the size of the U.S. labor force as a share of the total population was the same as it was when Barack Obama took office ... the U-3 unemployment rate would be 10.8%" not 8.3%. What does that mean? What is the labor force participation rate?
Every time I try to explain this, I am met with people who tell me I'm wrong and don't know what I'm talking about and that it's irrelevant, but Mr. Pethokoukis continues to report it. The labor force participation rate is essentially the entire universe of jobs available in the country, and there are over two million less jobs, two million fewer jobs. They just don't exist anymore. Whereas there used to be an ABC Window Washer outfit, for example, when Obama was immaculated in 2009, the place has shut down. So the ABC Window Washer jobs are gone. That is why people talk about creating new jobs. If we need to create new jobs and we need new jobs, it means there are fewer jobs to fill. So if same time number of jobs existed...
If all the ABC Window Washer outfits had been closed down, if they were still open, and those jobs were still available, based on current numbers the actual unemployment rate would be 10.8% not 8.3%. So the universe of available jobs matters. There is no way you can tell me that the American economy, with two million fewer jobs today than three years ago, is in any way upbeat. You've got the same number of people looking for fewer jobs. That's why the percentage changes. You have the same number of people looking for fewer jobs. It's like musical chairs: Every time the music stops, somebody's left out because there aren't enough chairs. It's the same principle here. So the 8.3% unemployment rate is meaningless. It's bogus because we're not comparing apples to apples. Part of the Obama economic record is that there are two million fewer ABC Window Washer jobs than there were when he was immaculated in 2009.
It's simple math cloaked in politics. Here's part 1...
- let's say you have 300 people in a big room
- let's say you have 270 jobs
- the unemployment rate of people in the room is 10%
Now, here's part 2...
- let's say you still have 300 people in the big room, but only 270 of them are trying to get a job (the other 30 are taking an extended nap)
- the number of jobs in the room drops to 245
- the unemployment rate of people in the room decreases to 9%
How can this be? How can you have 300 people in the room, lose 25 jobs (almost 10% of all jobs in the room), and still have a lower unemployment rate? It's easy, when you can simply ignore the people who are still in the room but aren't trying to get a job. The percentage appears to go down, but in reality there are fewer jobs to be had.
This is precisely how the current 'unemployment' rate has been going down for the past year without any meaningful new jobs being created. This is the "U-3" unemployment number, and this is what's being reported as going down now. If, however, you look at the "U-6" unemployment number (that includes those people who aren't even trying to get a job anymore), the real unemployment in this country is still hovering around 10%.
It's deception on the part of the White House, and deception on the part of the media to go along with the spin in their reporting. Why?
Because no President in American history has been re-elected with an unemployment number higher than 8%. Look for the numbers to continue being fudged until at least the next election.
Welcome to Hope-n-change!
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