Another View Of The Unemployment Fake

U.S. unemployment rate ‘faked,’ N.Y. Post critic charges

November 19, 2013, 10:50 AM

A longtime critic of how the U.S. unemployment rate is calculated is at it again: New York Post columnist John Crudele claims the government manipulated Census data in such a sway to cause the jobless rate to drop sharply right before the 2012 presidential election.

Now Crudele also says he has a source to prove it – and he’s willing to share the name with government and congressional investigators.

Believable? Critics of President Obama certainly think so, judging by the responses. Rick Santelli, the CNBC market analyst often credited as a godfather of the Tea Party movement, said on-air Tuesday that he also long suspected the unemployment rate was misleading.

Yet Crudele’s repeated charges of data manipulation have never been verified by any other news organization or even by a partisan political outfit. The compilation of Census data and whether people are working is a complicated process involving a great deal of statistical analysis that can mystify a non-economist. It would be easy to get things wrong.

In other words, no one else has seen this Loch Ness monster.

By late Tuesday, the Census released a statement disavowing any knowledge of data tampering. “We have no reason to believe that there was a systematic manipulation of the data described in media reports,” the agency said.

Census said information offered by Crudele has been passed on to the Office of the Inspector General, which investigates complaints of government malfeasance

Crudele’s charge centers on allegedly fraudulent activity in the  Philadelphia area. But even if such fraud occurred, it’s hard to believe that the results from one city could dramatically alter the nation’s unemployment rate.

In September 2012, the official unemployment rate surprisingly fell to 7.8% from 8.1% just two months before President Obama defeated Republican challenger Mitt Romney. And it’s been falling ever since, touching a low of 7.2% a few months ago.

Part of the reason: Fewer people are looking for work because jobs are still hard to find. People who stop looking for work are not counted in the unemployment statistics.

Crudele has previously accused the Census bureau of falsifying data, but a top government official strongly denied those charges.

Whatever the truth, few if any Americans really believe the labor market is healthy despite a falling unemployment rate. Some 22 million Americans can’t get a good job and many young people are having a hard time finding work after they leave college. Times aren’t as tough as they were a few years ago, but they are still tough. The unemployment rate is closer to 14% if people forced to work part time and those who want a job are included.

- Jeffry Bartash