In a blog entry today at PowerLine titled The Big Lie on Unemployment , John Hinderaker points to an article by Jim Clifton, the CEO of Gallup titled—ta da!— The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment

Hinderaker explained the significance of Clifton's piece: "I was struck by it, in part because I don’t recall seeing anything this hard-hitting from Gallup, a genuinely non-partisan organization."

The Clifton piece is short and worth reading in full. Here's a sample:

Right now, we're hearing much celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street about how unemployment is "down" to 5.6%. The cheerleading for this number is deafening. The media loves a comeback story, the White House wants to score political points and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market. None of them will tell you this: 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.

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. [Link in original]

Clifton goes on to present a startling statistic I'd not seen before:We can combine Clifton's "44%" with the news yesterday from the Center for Immigration Studies, covered here by Brenda Walker , that this casually lawless administration has issued 5.5 million work permits more than current statutes allow.

(Note that the newly-discovered 5.5 million has no connection with the amnesty-by-decree of an anticipated 5 million illegal aliens that will turn on this spring, absent an effective congressional counterattack. What's in common between the two is their flashing-lights lawlesness.)