It’s breathtaking how we are being lied to about unemployment specifically, and the economy in general. Just Friday we learned unemployment is down to 7.7% with the miraculous addition of over 200,000 jobs. The media was instantly celebrating great news. But is it actually great news?
First of all the REAL unemployment figure (as all economists know) is U6- which is the true measurement of not only those officially classified as unemployed, but those who have stopped looking. That number is over 14%. Why does the media never mention U6? If we have two measures of joblessness- one at 7.7% and one above 14%, why do they choose to only trumpet the lower figure? My bet is that if a Republican like George W. Bush were President, we’d hear the 14% figure bandied about in the national media day and night. But this media loves, adores and protects Obama from the embarrassment of 14% REAL unemployment.
Second, let’s assume the 7.7% is accurate (which it’s not). Dig just beneath the surface of that fraudulent number (that misrepresents the true number of unemployed plus under-employed Americans), and you’ll find that black unemployment is 13.8% versus 6.8% white unemployment. Even worse is 25.1% teen unemployment. None of this is even mentioned by the biased liberal media.
We can assume if the U6 figure was used, both of these numbers would also be much higher. I’m sure REAL black unemployment is in the 20% to 25% range, while REAL teen unemployment may in fact be in the range of 40%.
So let me ask you a question. If black unemployment were 13.8% under a Republican President, would the media ignore that storyline? Or would there be massive million man marches on Washington led by Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and U.S. Senator Barack Obama? Wouldn’t black leaders be blaming the disparate numbers between white and black unemployment on racism and “the racist pro business, low tax policies of a cruel, harsh Republican President?” Yet in this case, with a black Democrat President, with the same numbers, we hear not a peep of protest or discontent out of the black leaders. Interesting.
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Third if you look beneath the top figure of 236,000 new jobs in February, you see that America actually lost 77,000 full-time jobs, and gained a record number of “multiple job holders.” Somehow the media forgot to mention this.
America under Obama has become a vast wasteland of lousy part-time jobs with low pay and no benefits. If we had a Republican President, don’t you think the media might be mentioning this? Is it possible the “good news” in Friday’s jobs report is actually terrible news? It isn’t actually 236,000 Americans returning to work. It’s simply about 100,000 desperate American workers each taking three part-time jobs, plus dipping into their 401K, plus maxing out their credit cards, to survive for another month.
Or didn’t you hear earlier in the week that Americans are dipping into their retirement accounts in record numbers?
This story has been totally ignored for four long years under Obama. The only jobs being created in this terrible Obamageddon economy are crappy jobs with poor pay.
According to a report released in February by the National Employment Law Project, higher-wage industries are accounting for 40 percent of the job losses in America, but only 14 percent of the job growth. Lower-wage industries are accounting for 49 percent of the job growth.
Back in 1980, less than 30 percent of all jobs in the United States were low-income jobs. Today, more than 40 percent of all jobs in the United States are low-income jobs.
Lastly, why does the media trumpet the drop in February’s unemployment (based on part-time jobs), but ignore the fact that under Obama the overall employment picture looks similar to a Great Depression? The real figure we should all be discussing is an all-time record 89,304,000 able-bodied, working age Americans no longer in the labor force.
Incidentally based on that figure America actually lost 296,000 jobs since January.
Friday’s report is actually horrible news, if only the Obama Kool-Aid drinking media would report the truth.
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