Beware Of Rosy Job Numbers

 

 

” Don’t be fooled by the everything’s-coming-up-roses coverage that the national news media gave the Obama administration’s job numbers last week.

  The news headlines said the Obama economy created 321,000 jobs last month, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But a little closer examination of the other numbers, buried in the bureau’s report, tells a far sadder story.

  A large share of the nonfarm employment figures were low-paying, part-time jobs among Americans who the bureau refers to as “involuntary part-time workers.” They’re people “who would have preferred full-time employment” but were “working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a good full-time job,” the government said.

  There were seven million of these people for whom life in the dreary Obama economy has changed very little, and their numbers “changed little in November,” the bureau said deep into its report.

  If the number of jobs rose by 321,000, shouldn’t the unemployment percentage have fallen in November? No, the number of jobless Americans “was little changed at 9.1 million” and the 5.8 percent rate didn’t budge.

  Did you hear it put just that way on the nightly network news shows last week? No? I didn’t think so. But it gets worse.

The unemployment rate for adult men actually “rose to 5.4 percent in November,” BLS said. And the jobless rates for adult women (5.3 percent), working age teenagers (17.7 percent), blacks (11.1 percent), and Hispanics (6.6 percent) showed “little change over the month.” “

 

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