Unemployment: BLS versus Reality [Reader Post]

Being a conservative, I’ll need a little help with this one. I’m hoping y’all Democrats/liberals/progressives out there can assist me with what is obviously “magic math.” If there were approximately 119,000 fewer people working in August than in July, then how did the “official” U-3 unemployment rate DROP from 8.3 percent in July to 8.1 percent in August? And how could the U-6 rate drop from 15 percent to 14.7 percent during the same period?

Could it possibly be something that Department of Labor (DOL) Secretary Hilda L. Solis and Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Acting Commissioner John Galvin did? Naaaaaaaaaaaw, it couldn’t be them since we know (said very sarcastically) both of them to be above politics, just like their boss, President Barack Hussein “kill list” Obama. Suuuuuuuuuure!

This statement: “August payroll employment rises (+96,000); unemployment rate edges down (8.1%)” appears on the BLS web site as its September 7, 2012 message. There is also, if you follow the link created by the previous statement, this statement: “The number of unemployed persons, at 12.5 million, was little changed in August. (See table A-1.)” The statement, “The number of unemployed persons, at 12.5 million, was little changed in August” itself illustrates how “in the tank” the BLS is for Obama. How could “little changed” equate to a 0.2 percent drop in the unemployment rate?

Going to table A-1 reveals that the TOTAL Employed fell from 142,220 (thousand) in July to 142,101 (thousand) in August. By my (obviously deficient) math, that’s a drop in employment of 119 (thousand). Can anyone show me the error I’ve obviously made, how John Galvin and the BLS arrived at a gain in employment of 96 (thousand) jobs, while my calculations show just the opposite, a drop of 119 (thousand) jobs? And all of these figures are seasonally adjusted. Non-seasonally adjusted figures paint an even bleaker picture.

Table A-1 also shows that “Persons who currently want a job” rose from 6,554 (thousand) in July to 6,957 (thousand) in August, an increase of 9.4 percent.

Let’s return to the U-3 “official” 8.1 percent unemployment rate in August. Could that drop from 8.3 percent in July be due to the fact that approximately 581 (thousand) people quit looking for jobs and dropped out of the labor force to join the “Not in labor force?” The unemployment rate is the percentage of people in the labor force who did not have a job. To be counted as in the labor force, a person, according to the BLS, must be at least 16 years of age, are not in the military or an institution, and either have a job or have actively looked for one in the last four weeks.

Table A-1 shows 155,013 (thousand) people who fit those criteria, who were in the “Civilian labor force” in July. It also shows 12,794 (thousand) as unemployed, for a rate of 8.3 percent. Table A-1 also shows 154,645 (thousand) people in the “Civilian labor force” in August, 12,544 (thousand) as unemployed, for a rate of 8.1 percent.

So the “official” U-3 unemployment rate of 8.1 percent disregards the facts that people “Not in labor force” rose from 88,340 (thousand) in July to 88,921 (thousand) in August, an increase of just over 1 percent. And that the “Civilian labor force Participation rate” fell from 63.7 percent in July to 63.5 percent in August (BTW, the lowest rate in thirty years). And it disregards the rise in people who want a job.

What does all of this mean? It means that had the BLS not manipulated the data, had used the 30 year average “Civilian labor force Participation rate”of 65.8 percent, the unemployment rate would be 11.7 percent. What is more important is the fact that there is a 45 percent gap between the reported 8.1 percent unemployment rate and reality. And that the size of that gap is the greatest since January 1983, just in time for the presidential election. Are we surprised by this? The MSM will do anything, including making itself appear as a fool, to get the unemployment rate down low enough to get Obama reelected. And, if the long term discouraged workers the government doesn’t count at all anymore since 1994 were included, as they are at Shadow Government Statistics, the rate would be about 23 percent.

Perhaps it’s not my math that’s the problem. Perhaps the problem lies with the BLS and its magic math, hoping that we will just accept what the MSM slavishly reports and not look at what is actually going on. The BLS and DOL are fast losing credibility as they become more of a political tool of the Obama administration. To paraphrase William Shakespeare in Hamlet, “Something is rotten in the MSM, BLS, and DOL.”

But that’s just my opinion.