Govt. Hypes False Unemployment Figures

The government released new unemployment figures yesterday, and the way they were bragging about them one would think good times were on the way again. Both Speaker Pelosi and President Obama credited their stimulus program with bringing the unemployment figures from above 10% to about 9.7%. Both were "cautiously optimistic" about the future.

I wish I could agree with them, but the fact is they were using false figures to paint a rosy picture of what is really an even blacker than ever unemployment situation. Whether on purpose or not, they were lying about a bleak unemployment situation in the United States.

Did the official government unemployment figures fall last month? Yes. But you must understand exactly what that figure denotes. It is just a figure showing who is receiving unemployment payments from the government. Once those funds are exhausted by a person, that person is no longer counted as unemployed -- whether they have found a job or not.

The 9.7% unemployment figure has nothing to do with the actual number of people out of work or seeking work. That figure is probably somewhere between 16% and 20%. It's hard to know since the government doesn't count the people who have exhausted their benefits or those who have given up trying to find work.

The harsh truth is that after last month more people are out of work than in the preceeding months. In January, an additional 20,000 people have joined the ranks of the unemployed (which now totals about 8.4 million jobs lost in the last couple of years).

This shows just how false and useless the official government unemployment figure is. While it shows unemployment fell by around .3%, the total number who are unemployed actually rose by at least 20,000 people.

Let me emphasize that. Unemployment is NOT dropping in this country. The number of people who are unemployed is still growing larger each month. I have said it before and I say it again -- we have not turned any corner on unemployment or the recession.

Until we have several months of job growth instead of job loss, we are just being foolish or lying to say we are starting to recover from this recession. There is no recovery yet, and it still might be quite a while before that recovery begins.