Rick Perry Is Right About Unemployment Numbers (& Wrong)

Rick Perry, who embarrassed himself and all Texans in his last run for president, is now trying to rehabilitate his image and make a second try for the Republican nomination. That's why he wound up at the Iowa Freedom Summit (a gathering of right-wing Republicans) in Iowa last weekend.

While he was there, he made a statement about the official unemployment numbers published each month by the Labor Department -- a statement that has been castigated by both Democrats and by political pundits.

Here is what Perry actually said at a breakfast meeting of the right-wingers:

"We've got the lowest participation rate since the late 1970s when Jimmy Carter was president. I'm talking about participation in the work force. That's of really great concern for me. I mean, who is it standing up for these people that I call the uncounted? They've lost hope that they can even get a job, so they're not even counted. When you look at the unemployment rate today, that's not the true unemployment rate, it's been massaged, it's been doctored."

I don't like Rick Perry very much. I am convinced that he was probably the worst governor the state of Texas has ever had -- much worse than George W. Bush. Perry was (and is) a right-wing opportunist, who did what he thought was good for his own career -- totally disregarding what was best for the citizens of Texas. And I think he would make a terrible president. That's why it pains me to say the following.

Rick Perry was right. The official unemployment rate is not the true unemployment rate, and the numbers have been "massaged" or "doctored" to make the unemployment rate look better to the public. The Labor Department leaves out millions of unemployed people from the official count each month because they have not looked for work in the last four weeks. They evidently assume these people no longer want a job, but the truth is that most of them would love to have a job if they just knew where to find one. They have just been turned down so often that they have given up hope.

The Labor Department calls these people "marginally attached" to the labor force, and no longer counts them as being unemployed. Last month the Labor Department estimated that there are around 2,260,000 of these "marginally attached" workers -- and that is undoubtably an undercount. And refusing to count these people as unemployed is definitely a "doctoring" of the unemployment statistics to make the government look better.

But Perry is also wrong. He inferred that this "doctoring" of the statistics is something done only by the Obama administration -- and something that no Republican president would do. And that inference is nothing less than an outrageous lie!

At least our last six presidential administrations have figured the unemployment statistics in exactly the same way (including the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush). They have all figured the official unemployment rate by excluding the "marginally attached" from those counted as unemployed, and they have all done it for the same reason -- to make their administration look better on unemployment than it actually was. 

President Obama is doing nothing that other presidents didn't also do, and Perry's inference that Obama is doing something different is just not true -- and it makes Perry look like a lying opportunistic creep (which he is).

(NOTE -- The caricature of Rick Perry above is by DonkeyHotey.)