Submitted by Silver Shield from Don't Tread on Me

Presto! 9.4% Unemployment! How The Government Lies.



Hooray…Happy days are here again!

That is exactly what the elite would have us believe with the 9.4% unemployment number in this huge CONfidence game otherwise known as the USEconomy.

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” -George Orwell

We were having dinner at my in-law’s house and I had overheard the TV playing in the back ground. At one point, I thought I had heard the squealing of teenagers who were fawning over Justin Beiber. Instead, it turned out that it was someone on the news reporting the new, much lower 9.4% unemployment rate. I could hear the panting of excitement spoken by the breathless reporters who were interviewing very serious economists about this new 9.4% rate. The news aired their personal interest piece about a girl who was just hired at an internet company. She commented with the utmost confidence that the economy was getting better!! You have all heard that saying, “it is a recession when your neighbor loses a job, but when you lose a job it is a depression.” Well, according to her, we are out of her depression.

But alas, this is all a dream and the media is using their very best, tried and true propaganda to keep the people from getting too upset with reality. Let me just state that the real rate of unemployment is much, much more than the 9.4% and if the government really reported what was really going on, there would be revolution in the morning. Allow me to destroy this fictional 9.4% number and the billion dollar propaganda machine that provides cover for the trillion dollar banking and government schemes. I will accomplish this magical feat with writing a blog post in my pajamas. That is real magic!

“There are three types of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.” -Mark Twain.

The first thing we need to understand is the birth/death model. It is an estimate/lie that the Bureau of Labor Statistics starts with to figure out how many jobs small companies have created.

Since so many jobs in this country are created by small companies, they pull numbers out of a hat to start with. This is a total guess that constantly gets manipulated to hide the truth. Literally 250,000 jobs can be created out of thin air.

The rest of the number is determined from a survey. The BLS’s number showed an overall increase of +103,000 jobs.(Can you hear my sarcastic Whoopie!?) The economy needs to create 250,000 a month just to keep up with the growth of the population. A household survey showed an increase of +297,000 jobs and -260,000 fewer people in the labor force. This combined into a drop of 9.8% to 9.4%.

The majority of those jobs are all of those “awesome” seasonal jobs during the Christmas season that will be going away now that we are in the new year. This little bump happens every year and is touted as a great development. Actually, it is sad that in our consumer economy, we have to hire part-time workers to handle the hoards of debt slaves as they spend their way into oblivion. I wish it was seasonal work at a factory like hiring a third shift at a plant actually producing something. Moving on…

The next big thing we need to understand is the labor force participation rate. It reflects people between the ages of 18-64 years old, who are actually working or looking for work. This does not include students, moms, retired, and now more importantly people not even looking for jobs. The decline in the labor participation rate is becoming a cancer as people have been unemployed for a long time and entire industries are gone for good. The labor participation rate is usually around 67-68%, but has just reached a fresh 25 year low of 64.4%. This means on average, the unemployment numbers are lowered by 2.6-3.6% simply because the eligible pool is dropping.

We have now heard of the 99ers. They are people at the end of their 99 week of unemployment benefits/hush money. Well let’s get into our little time machine and travel back 99 weeks ago. That would have been smack dab in the middle of the 2008 financial crisis that set off this huge mess. So people who still have not found a job since the economy turned for the worst in 2008 do not count. We know that the crisis may have started two years ago but the firings did not happen right away as people tried to hang on. We can expect this decline in the labor participation rate for sometime, hiding some of the pain out there.

The government does keep track of these discouraged workers in another unemployment number. ( Although they do not have their minions in the press shout it from the top of their lungs.) The U-6 number measures the 9.4% unemployed number from above plus short term discouraged workers and people working part time because they cannot find suitable employment. This underemployment rate the government admits to is 19%. Wow, that is a much scarier number but like the commercials say, “but wait, there’s more!” If you added in long term discouraged workers that the government dropped from their number in 1994, you would have close to 25% unemployment.

25% unemployment should be torches and pitch fork numbers. We have been so thoroughly enslaved that people are more excited about American ‘Idle’

The unemployment nightmare does not stop there. What about all of those good paying jobs that are gone forever like in finance, housing, manufacturing, etc.? If you lose a $100k job in one of those industries and you get the only job you can working at Costco of $25k a year, then you are employed according to the unemployment number. What is not shown, is the quality of the jobs that are out there. When you see 5,000 people applying for an $8 an hour job at Walmart, something is seriously wrong.

Another factor you will not hear in the main stream media is how many of the jobs that are out there are government jobs. Nationally, if you include federal, state and local workers, the Government employs 17% of the work force. This growth in government jobs is hiding probably another 8-10%. Now I do not need to go into the fact that economically these workers provide very little to the overall economy. Right now there are more people in the government than in the manufacturing economy.

“Yeah, but government jobs are “good paying jobs.” The government produces nothing and its only source of income is the productive efforts of those in the real world, like you. The real sick thing is an average government employee makes again on average, when you include their benefits, TWICE of what the average civilian makes. This is an unsustainable situation, to say the least.

Here’s another factor that is hidden from you. What about all of those companies and industries that received government contracts or even worse, got bailed out through the government largesse? How many of the private sector jobs were as a result of more government spending?

So let’s break this down.

If we added to the official 9.4% unemployment rate to all of the short and long term discouraged unemployed, the underemployed, the retired, the moms, the babies, the government workers, the bailed out industries, the heavily subsidized farmers, the private government contractors, etc., we are just left with you and me that provide anything of value in this country. Since I am in my pajamas and on my second cup of coffee, I think we can even rule me out.

So get back to work!

The world’s paper ponzi scheme depends on you depends on you.