Unemployment Truths

With a certain degree of disregard for the truth, the Obama Administration has taken great pride in the announcement that for January of 2010 the American unemployment level had fallen to 9.7 per cent. Things are headed in "the right direction", proclaimed the White House. In reality it is most difficult to assign any real credibility to Washington's claim of a reduction in the impact of the unemployed on the American economy.

In December of 2009 the American economy lost 150,000 jobs and in January of 2010 the monthly job loss figure was placed at 20,000. With this loss of 170,000 employment positions it is hard to believe that the national unemployment rate dropped from 10.1% to 9.7%. In fact, since December of 2007 the United States has lost, and has not replaced, some 8,400,000 jobs.

The factor that the Obama Administration is utilizing to lower the national unemployment rate has to do with a classification known as "discouraged job seekers". This month the number of "discouraged job seekers" was set at 1,100,000. These are Americans who are not employed and have given up looking for work. Because of their lack of apparent ambition and lack of on-going job seeking efforts, the White House has elected to ignore their existence. Counting this million plus group as being among the unemployed pushes the Obama Administration 9.7% calculation to almost 17%.

To demonstrate this nationwide unemployment urgency, in Orlando there are 8.92 unemployed for each advertised job; in Providence the figure is 9.23; and in Detroit the figure is at a nationwide high of 20.76. These types of calculations cannot be glossed over by Washington and no matter how low Obama declares unemployment to be, the locals know the truth and will be heard on election day.

With any luck the voting precedent recently set in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts will appear again, and even stronger, in November.