At first reading, I thought well, maybe the economy truly is turning around. But then I started reading the analysis pretty carefully. It didn’t take long to come to the conclusion that while adding 290,000 jobs nationwide is always a good thing, when 77,000 of those jobs are temporary federal jobs created by hiring 2010 census workers, we have a long way to go before we can declare the recession over.
Experts talk about a jobless recovery. To me, that’s no recovery at all. It may bode well for Wall Street and big corporations, but it sure doesn’t help the average person, who is struggling to find a job just to feed their family. Unemployment in America is a major problem and it is one that we must solve.
Although the Obama Administration prefers to focus on the good news in the latest report by the bureau of Labor and Statistics, we also have to pay close attention to the fact that the unemployment rate rose from 9.7% to 9.9%. Some experts say that is just because people who have stopped looking for work are back looking. That is misleading.
The American people never give up looking for work, and what the Obama Administration doesn’t tell you is that the statistics kept by the Labor Department don’t include the true unemployment figures. For example, there is a statistic called U-6, which is generally accepted to be the true unemployment rate, but is never referred to by any government agency.
The Bureau of Labor and Statistics admits that “U-6: Includes the unemployed, marginally attached workers, and part-time workers. This calculation is considered the real unemployment rate because it includes the general population’s idea of unemployment.”
The actual number of unemployed in America is estimated to be over 17% of our population presently employed. That is a staggering figure and these are the people that most need our help.
Cross posted at Tom Ganley.com
Moe Lane
Steve Maley
KnightsofMalta
Dan Spencer
Dan McLaughlin
more doctoring
Common_Cents (Diary) Wednesday, May 12th at 8:55PM EST (link)“the plug number of the month is the +188,000 represented by the so-called “birth/death” model.
That’s the BLS best-guess of how many net new jobs were invented by maybe some of the more than 9.2 million people involuntarily working part time or by maybe some of the more than 6.7 million people unemployed for more than six months (record high) or perhaps by some of the 2.4 million “marginally attached/discouraged” workers (who aren’t counted as being unemployed)”
How do they calculate the birth/death number? geeee, we’d like to know. Look at all those unemployed people creating jobs out of thin air! Oh yeah, latest reports say that food stamp redemptions are breaking new highs as well. Green shoots everywhere, well, in the produce section.
Obama=Golfer in Chief, Leading from,
behind, the Back Nine.Leaders don’t create movements. Movements create leaders. Get involved. Your future depends on it.
Govt “invests” YOUR tax money for POLITICAL return rather than economic return.
The REAL unemployment story? It pays NOT to work
izoneguy (Diary) Wednesday, May 12th at 9:24PM EST (link)Landscapers find workers choosing jobless pay
http://detnews.com/article/20100510/BIZ/5100335/
In a state with the nation’s highest jobless rate, landscaping companies are finding some job applicants are rejecting work offers so they can continue collecting unemployment benefits.
Members of the Michigan Nursery and Landscape Association “have told me that they have a lot of people applying but that when they actually talk to them, it turns out that they’re on unemployment and not looking for work,” said Amy Frankmann, the group’s executive director. “It is starting to make things difficult.”
Chris Pompeo, vice president of operations for Landscape America in Warren, said he has had about a dozen offers declined. One applicant, who had eight weeks to go until his state unemployment benefits ran out, asked for a deferred start date.
“It’s like, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Pompeo said. “It’s frustrating. It’s honestly something I’ve never seen before. They say, ‘Oh, OK,’ like I surprised them by offering them a job.”
Some job applicants are asking to be paid in cash so they can collect unemployment illegally, said Gayle Younglove, vice president at Outdoor Experts Inc. in Romulus.
The average landscape worker earns about $12 per hour, according to the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Growth. A full-time landscaping employee would make $225 more a week working than from an unemployment check of $255.
But after federal and state taxes are deducted, a full-time landscaper would earn $350 a week, or $95 more than a jobless check. The gap could narrow further for those who worked at other higher-paying seasonal jobs, such as construction or roofing, which would result in a larger benefits check.
The maximum weekly benefit an unemployed Michigan worker can receive is $387.
The jobless in Michigan are collecting for a longer time — an average of 19.4 weeks last year, up from 15 weeks in 2008. State benefits last for up to 26 weeks.
The unemployed can then apply for extended federal benefits that increase the total time on the public dole up to a maximum of 99 weeks.
The point cannot be made often enough: Modern liberalism, as embodied in the Obama presidency, is the defender of the status quo. And the status quo is a road to economic ruin. Political forces cannot redistribute the wealth that the economic system does not produce.