Unemployment Numbers Have Always Been Understated

“I don’t believe anything the government tells me”-George Carlin

Carlin had it right.  You really cannot believe anything the government tells you anymore.  Democrat, Republican, and Independent-it seems all of them think they have to lie to us.  Part of what fuels the deep resentment so many American’s feel right now are the lies.  Let’s take unemployment for example.

Gallup President and CEO Jim Clifton, recently published an article where he called the feds out on the false unemployment numbers.  The ‘official’ number is an outright lie according to Clifton:

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.

Most of us probably know someone who falls into this category.  They’ve been out of work for months and while they may have found part-time temporary work over the last several months, they are now approaching years since they’ve held a full-time, 40-hour per week job.  Texas has fared well compared to other states, but still, we have too many unemployed among our ranks.

Clifton continues:

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.

If you count the number of people who are underemployed, that is, who work fewer than 30 hours per week (part-time) and add that to the actual unemployed (including the discouraged who’ve truly given up hope of ever being fully employed again), the real number of Americans not working full time is truly staggering, 12.5-15 percent.  Forbes put the number at 12.6 percent last year, citing the feds U6 report on employment figures.  That number now sits at over 14 percent.

The U6 is the report that the complicit media will not tell you about.  I do believe though that if the man in the White House were a Republican, they (the media) just might be a bit more inclined to tell you the truth.  Under those circumstances, revealing the truth would actually fit their narrative.