Sen. Bernie Sanders said Monday that the Obama administration is not being forthright with the American people about the real unemployment rate.

The Vermont senator told a Portland, Maine, audience of 7,500 that the Labor Department’s 5.3 percent unemployment rate is a ruse.

“There is another set of government statistics,” the independent senator said, The Daily Caller reported, “and that real unemployment if you include those people who have given up looking for work and the millions of others who are working part-time 20, 25 hours a week when they want to work full-time, when you put all of that together, real unemployment is 10.5 percent.”

A July 2 report by the Labor Department said the U.S. economy added 223,000 in the previous month. Payroll gains for April and May, however, were revised downward by 60,000 jobs.

Mr. Sanders has surged in polls in recent days as he attempts to be seen as a viable alternative to former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.

The senator, who describes himself as a socialist, raised $15 million for his campaign through April.

“I am more than aware that my opponents will be able to outspend us,” Mr. Sanders told a Wisconsin audience on July 2, The Associated Press reported. “They may have the money but we have the people. And when the people stand together, we can win.”