Unemployment Numbers Should Be At Least Double If Not Much Greater! BLS Lies

ROSY JOBLESS NUMBERS COVER UP BAD NEWS

Economist sifts truth from 'politically manipulated statistics'

Published: 17 hours ago

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2012/01/Jerome-R.-Corsi_avatar-96x96.jpg

 JEROME R. CORSI 

Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series about the unprecedented dependence Americans have on their federal government. The first story shows how the food-stamp program has doubled under President Obama, as it did under President George W. Bush. The second story reports the strain on the welfare system caused by record numbers of Americans retiring amid a declining work force.

NEW YORK – As the Obama administration announced unemployment in June had fallen to 5.3 percent, respected economist John Williams, the author of Shadow.stats.com, argued in his private subscription newsletter that the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ rosy numbers were not the result of a recovering economy creating full-time jobs but a product of manipulating statistics for political purposes.

Williams pointed out that the drop in unemployment from 5.5 percent in May to 5.3 percent in June reflected 375,000 unemployed workers disappearing from the workforce.

“Separately, aside from the headline June payroll gain of 223,000, which was a count of jobs, not people holding jobs, headline full-time employment fell by 349,000, representing the count of people who lost full-time jobs in June,” Williams wrote in his subscription newsletter.

Williams said that on the unemployment front, the drop in the headline U3 rate from 5.5 percent to 5.3 percent “could not have been more negative.”

“Instead of the 375,000 drop in unemployment representing people finding gainful employment, it represented those people leaving the headline labor force, most likely being shifted to the headline discouraged-worker category by the BLS,” he said.

Williams point was that the BLS reported June payrolls rose by 223,000 in June, but it neglected to point out that “June payrolls” measures the number of jobs, not the number of people with jobs.

“Headline June employment and unemployment numbers were more typical of deteriorating, broad economic activity than they were of an expanding economy in its purported sixth year of recovery,” he said.

Supporting Williams’ argument, the BLS also reported last week that a record 93,636,000 Americans were no longer in the labor force in June, up from 92,986,000 in May, while the labor force participation rate continued to hover near the 38-year record low, registering labor force participation at only 62.6 percent for June.

Calculating unemployment by historically accepted government methodologies, Williams concludes the unemployment rate in June was not the 5.3 percent “headline rate” reported by the Obama administration, but above 23 percent, where it has been since April 2013.

Manipulated unemployment rates

The BLS publishes six levels of unemployment, but only the headline U3 unemployment rate gets attention.

The headline number does not count the “discouraged” unemployed workers who have actively looked for work in the past year but not in the past four weeks, because they believe no jobs are available.

Williams has demonstrated that it takes an expert to truly decipher BLS unemployment statistics.

The U6 unemployment rate is the BLS’s broadest measure. It includes those marginally attached to the labor force and the “under-employed” – those who have accepted part-time jobs when they are really looking for full-time employment. Also included are what Williams describes as short-term discouraged workers who have looked for a job in the past year but not the past four weeks.

Since 1994, however, the long-term discouraged workers, those who have been discouraged for more than one year, have been excluded from all government data.

The only measure BLS reports to the public as the official monthly unemployment rate is the seasonally adjusted U3 number.

Williams calculates his ShadowStats Alternative Unemployment Rate by adding to the BLS U6 numbers the long-term discouraged workers.

Williams argues that his ShadowStats Alternative Unemployment measure most closely mirrors common experience.

“If you were to survey everyone in the country as to whether they were employed or unemployed, without qualification as to when they last looked for a job, the resulting unemployment rate would be close to the ShadowStats estimate,” Williams explained to WND.

The headline BLS unemployment rate has stayed relatively low because it excludes all discouraged workers, Williams argues.

Here is a more complete unemployment table that includes the seasonally adjusted unemployment percentages for U3 unemployment, as well as the same for U6 unemployment, followed by the ShadowStats Alternative Unemployment rate, comparing June 2014 with June 2015.

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/07/shadow-stats2.jpg

As is made clear by the table, the BLS admitted that in June 2015, when the headline unemployment rate reported to the U.S. public was the U3 rate of 5.3 percent, the U6 rate for June 2015 was much higher, 10.5 percent.

Obama ‘non-recovery’

Williams believes the drop in unemployment to 5.3 percent in June reflects systematic government manipulation in what he characterizes as Obama’s “non-recovery.”

“In the ongoing economic collapse into 2008 and 2009, and the non-recovery thereafter, the broad drop in the U3 unemployment rate from its headline peak of 10 percent in 2009 to today’s 5.3 percent has been due largely to unemployed giving up looking for work, being redefined out of headline reporting and the labor force, as discouraged workers,” Williams explained in his current subscription newsletter.

He noted that as new discouraged workers move regularly from U3 into U6 unemployment accounting, those who have been discouraged for one year are dropped from the U6 measure.

As a result, the U6 measure has been declining along with U3 for some time.

But those being pushed out of U6 still are counted in the ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment Measure, which has remained steady, at or near its historic-high rate for the last couple of years, Williams said.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/07/rosy-jobless-numbers-cover-up-bad-news/#kyvqmvEOKxM0FCVS.99

16% Of All Men 25 to 54 Are Not Working! That Is A Disaster, Regardless Of What Government Stats Say

Mass Flight From U.S. Labor Force Drives Down April Unemployment

May 2, 2014 by Ben Bullard 

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The U.S. labor force benefited from the creation of 288,000 jobs last month, the highest number since the start of 2012, and the National rate of unemployment concurrently fell from 6.7 percent in March to 6.3 percent.

You can see how Bloomberg and the Associated Press reported the good news here andhere.

Read far enough into those stories – and it will take you a while – and you’ll eventually encounter the lede: The number of people participating in the U.S. labor force in April shrank by a staggering 800,000. As you know, people who aren’t looking for work aren’t counted in the BLS’ calculation of the unemployment rate. Yet the number of people who have bowed out of the American labor force now stands at 92 million.

That’s nearly one-third of the population of the entire country – and roughly 38 percent of the241 million residents over the age of 18.

With 38 percent of American adults not even trying to find work, what difference does a 6.3 percent unemployment rate make? The Obama Administration found the silver lining in the April numbers, noting that the actual rate of job creation is, in fact accelerating – which, so far as it goes, is certainly true – and that several economic sectors saw an uptick in hiring during April (also true).

But the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers also reveal that hourly earnings did not increase – an indicator that much of that growth is still coming in the form of low-wage, low-skill jobs (so much for closing that pernicious wealth gap, Obama).

And, stepping back, the labor economy in the U.S. reflects an ongoing anemic “recovery” trend – one that hasn’t seen growth commensurate with periods of economic growth through the last two decades of the 20^th Century – often cited as a benchmark by which present economic growth is measured.

“Unfortunately, the effects of currency manipulation on the U.S. economy – along with self-imposed restraints on oil and gas development and the manifest inefficiencies imposed by dysfunctional management and profiteering in health care, higher education, and finance – have lowered U.S. annual growth to 1.7 percent since the turn of the century from the 3.4 percent pace accomplished during the Reagan-Clinton era,” wrote Peter Morici for Breitbarttoday.

“Consequently, jobs creation lags population growth. The unemployment rate, which fell to 6.3 percent in April from 6.7 percent the prior month, wholly masks the extent of the problem. The percentage of adults seeking employment dropped precipitously. One out of six men between the ages of 25 and 54 are without jobs, and many have given up looking for work and are not counted in the jobless rate.”

Economic Issues Will Have A Significant Impacts On Your Life.

Why Your Savings And Retirement Will Soon Be Gone

April 14, 2014 by Bob Livingston 

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THINKSTOCK

What’s left of the U.S. middle class is under economic assault like no time in American history.

Federal Reserve money printing is finally catching up to us. One hundred years of money printing is coming to a head. We are seeing the beginning phases of hyperinflation.

Never mind the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ phony inflationary measurement, where the consumer price index basket of goods is changed monthly to remove price-rising goods. Food prices are up 19 percent just since January. On an annualized basis, that is 76 percent. Rising food prices and rising gas prices are where the middle class see and feel inflation.

Remember that inflation is not rising prices. Rising prices are a symptom of inflation, which is an increase in the money supply through money creation or debt.

Printing money is a crime if you do it. But if the powerful government monopoly does it, it’s called “monetization.” Government is now desperately inflating because the more inflation, the more wealth is stolen.

Here are some truths:

• Governments steal as much as they can without collapsing the system (they hope).
• The more money they create for nothing, the richer and more powerful they get.
• The bigger the government gets and the more reckless it gets, the more it must suppress its people, because many begin to wake up.
• The bigger government crime, the greater the propaganda and deception.
• Fact: Every dollar the government creates means that a dollar is stolen from the people. Paper money confiscates wealth.

The act of money creation means that more and more of the national wealth flows to the Federal government. How in the name of Pete do people think that the U.S. government became so powerful and so wealthy in property?

The government produces nothing. It has to steal, and it does so on an unimaginable scale. The mind of man cannot deal with such a massive transfer of wealth, and few people even suspect it. Why do people not know about the biggest fraud in history?

In addition to $75 billion a month of quantitative easing, the Federal government is running multi-hundred-billion-dollar deficits. The U.S. now has at least $126 trillion in outstanding obligations (i.e., money it has stolen from the American people).

So what’s a government to do? Steal even more from the people.

The Federal government is eyeing the remaining savings and retirement accounts of the American people. This has been going on for years. In fact, individual retirement accounts were set up to fool Americans into investing in the stock market to prop it up, help consolidate retirement accounts and transfer it to the bankster mob. Think your money in IRAs, 401(k)s and pension funds belong to you? Ha! Try to take out your money and see what hoops you have to jump through and what penalties you have to pay.

There is now more than $21 trillion in U.S IRAs, 401(k)s and pension plans. That $21 trillion would more than offset the mythical $17.5 trillion U.S. “debt.” For more on the U.S. debt, readThe ‘National Debt’ Is Smoke And Mirrors.

Last year, the U.S. Consumer Protection Bureau, established by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, stated that it believes Americans are too stupid to prepare on their own for retirement and that it has proposed “managing” people’s retirement funds. What that means is another unConstitutional government agency will take your money and swap it for government funny money.

President Barack Obama’s MyRA “savings plan” is yet another scam to try and prop up the failing system. Announced at this year’s State of the Union address, Obama tried to huckster this boondoggle as a great way to “invest” in safe government securities and a starter savings account.

The term “government securities” is nothing more than typical government double-speak and an oxymoron. When the government goes bankrupt — and it will — those Treasuries will be worthless. And now the government is encouraging you to buy them.

MyRAs will earn the same interest as the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) Government Securities Investment Fund that is available to Federal employees. The TSP’s own paperwork says this about its interest rate: “The G Fund is subject to inflation risk, or the possibility that your G Fund investment will not grow enough to offset the reduction in purchasing power that results from inflation.”

If you want to “invest” in the U.S. government (not something I would recommend), there is currently a provision to do so. The MyRA plan mimics it. Just open an account with Treasuryto buy U.S. savings bonds. The difference is that MyRA will be run by a crony Wall Street firm.

All your savings will be visible to government and available for confiscation — the same government that is already eyeing your pension funds, individual retirement accounts and 401(k) plans, as I mentioned. Don’t think this will happen? Governments across the globehave already done so, and the U.S. government is on board in supporting what it is speciously calling “bail-ins” as occurred in Cyprus.

Under the scheme, when banks get in trouble or government needs more money, it swaps your bank savings for bank stock. You are in essence “buying” into the bank.

And if this news isn’t bad enough, take these two factors into consideration. Last fall, the International Monetary Fund issued a report recommending a series of escalating income and consumption tax increases, culminating in the direct confiscation of assets. Then last week, Russia floated a balloon through its Voice of Russia propaganda arm that it intends to attack the petrodollar in retaliation for America’s meddling in Ukraine.

First, from the IMF, according to page 49 of its report:

The sharp deterioration of the public finances in many countries has revived interest in a “capital levy”— a one-off tax on private wealth—as an exceptional measure to restore debt sustainability. The appeal is that such a tax, if it is implemented before avoidance is possible and there is a belief that it will never be repeated, does not distort behavior (and may be seen by some as fair). … The conditions for success are strong, but also need to be weighed against the risks of the alternatives, which include repudiating public debt or inflating it away…

The tax rates needed to bring down public debt to precrisis levels, moreover, are sizable: reducing debt ratios to end-2007 levels would require (for a sample of 15 euro area countries) a tax rate of about 10 percent on households with positive net wealth.

Regarding Russia and the petrodollar, this is not the first time another nation has threatened to trade oil outside the dollar. Such a move would be disastrous for the American economy and likely crash it.

Because of an agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, in order to trade in oil, countries must first transfer their money into U.S. dollars. This happens no matter who is buying the oil or who they’re buying it from. The oil-buying country gives the oil-selling country U.S. dollars and receives oil in exchange.

The oil-selling country then has to sell those dollars to convert it back to its own currency. If Russia, China and a few other countries begin trading oil in some other currency, about 3 trillion U.S. dollars will suddenly flood the market. This will send hyperinflation into the stratosphere.

I have long sounded a warning to get your retirement funds out of the system and remove your money from banks (beyond what is necessary to pay bills) in order to protect yourself. I did so long ago. I gladly took the penalty and have long since recovered what was taken.

I also recommend you buy gold and silver and keep it in your possession, not in the bank or in a safe deposit box.

If You Are No Longer Looking For Work, You Don't Count According To The Government

Obamanomics: Unemployment Falls Because Nobody’s Looking For Work

January 10, 2014 by Ben Bullard 

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According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the American economy added 74,000 jobs in December of 2013 – and yet the unemployment rate still managed to fall from 7 percent to 6 percent.

How can that be? Because nobody’s looking for work.

The civilian labor force in December shrank again, this time from 155.3 million to 154.9 million people. By percentage, that means the current 62.8 percent participation rate in today’s labor force is the lowest it’s been since 1978.

Meanwhile, there are now 91.8 million people not participating in the labor force – an all-time high that shows no sign of slowing down. About half a million people dropped out of the labor force in December alone, far outpacing the meager 74,000 added jobs.

The employment-to-unemployment ratio sits stagnantly at 58.6 percent to 41.4 percent. For all of 2013, the economy grew by an average of 182,000 jobs each month – more than double the December figure. And the matrix of 74,000 new December jobs can’t be envied for its quality. The retail sector was responsible for 55,000 of those jobs – 24,000 of which were in food and clothing stores.

In fact, if the labor force had held steady at its 2009 level of 162 million – before a “post-recession” decline that saw an additional 7 million people drop out – the actual unemployment rate would now stand at 10.8 percent. But the BLS doesn’t use workforce dropouts to tally unemployment, even though people who don’t have jobs and aren’t looking for work are, by definition, unemployed.