Real unemployment is 18%

JD Barleycorn's Avatar
By Peter Morici

Friday, the Labor Department is expected to report the economy added 235,000 jobs in July, and the unemployment rate remained steady at 6.1 percent, but that hardly tells the story.

The jobless rate may be down from its recession peak of 10 percent, but much of this results from adults, discouraged by the lack of decent job openings, having quit altogether. They are neither employed nor looking for work.
Only about half of the drop in the adult participation rate may be attributed to the Baby Boom generation reaching retirement age. Lacking adequate resources to retire, a larger percentage of adults over 65 are working than before the recession.
Many Americans who would like full time jobs are stuck in part-time positions, because businesses can hire desirable part-time workers to supplement a core of permanent, full-time employees, but at lower wages. And Obamacare’s employer health insurance mandates will not apply to workers on the job less than 30 hours a week.
Since 2000, Congress has enhanced the earned income tax credit and expanded programs that provide direct benefits to low-income workers, including food stamps, Medicaid, Obamacare, and rent and mortgage assistance.
Virtually all phase as family incomes rise, either by securing higher hourly pay or working more hours, and impose an effective marginal tax rate as high as 50 percent. Consequently, these programs discourage work and skills acquisition and encourage single parents and one partner in two adult households not to work. Often, these motivate single people to work only part-time.
Undocumented immigrants face more difficulties accessing these programs, and lax immigration enforcement permits them to openly take jobs that government benefits discourage low-income Americans from accepting.
Employers can, intentionally or unintentionally, abuse the H-1B visa program, which permit businesses to employ foreign workers when qualified Americans are unavailable. Americans may be overlooked because they demand higher wages or are not networked with immigrants that are already employed in technical and managerial positions.
The economy has created only about 6 million new jobs during the Bush-Obama years, whereas the comparable figure during the Reagan-Clinton period was about 40 million. A recent study by the Center for Immigration Studies indicates that virtually all the new jobs created since 2000 went to immigrants, whereas none were created for native-born Americans.
Adding in discouraged adults who say they would begin looking for work if conditions were better, those working part-time but say they want full time work, and the effects of immigration, the unemployment rate becomes about 15 percent—and that is a lower bound estimate.
Many young people are being duped both by unscrupulous for profit, post-secondary institutions—as well as accredited colleges and universities with low admission standards—to enroll in useless programs. They would likely be in the labor force now but for easy access to federally sponsored loans and will end up heavily in debt.
Adding in these students, the real unemployment rate among U.S. citizens and permanent residents is at least 18 percent.
Since 2000, GDP growth has averaged 1.7 per year, whereas during the Reagan-Clinton years, it was 3.4 percent. The reluctance of both Presidents Bush and Obama to confront Chinese protectionism and currency manipulation and open up offshore oil for development have created a huge trade deficit that sends consumer demand, growth, and jobs abroad.
New business regulations, more burdensome than are necessary to accomplish legitimate consumer protection and environmental objectives, exacerbate these problems.
All of this suppresses wages except for the most skilled and talented workers.
No surprise, average family income, adjusted for inflation has fallen from about $55,600 in 2007 to $51,000 even as the gap between families at the bottom and top widens.
Peter Morici is an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland, national columnist and five-time winner of the MarketWatch best forecaster award. He tweets @pmorici1.
Jewish Lawyer's Avatar
Excellent post exposing the deception of the current government.
wellendowed1911's Avatar
As I have posted numerous of times you can use that logic any time - if the UE rate was 5 percent one can easily say the real unemployment rate is 10 percent because you are always going to have an outlier of people who have stopped looking for work so the OP post was basically a waste of time. So when Bush had the UE rate spiraling upwards it was worst than what it really was guys. Bottom line Romney is on record stating he would have it down to 6 percent if he were elected I guess his 6 percent would have been artificial as well ?
Jewish Lawyer's Avatar
As I have posted numerous of times you can use that logic any time - if the UE rate was 5 percent one can easily say the real unemployment rate is 10 percent because you are always going to have an outlier of people who have stopped looking for work so the OP post was basically a waste of time. So when Bush had the UE rate spiraling upwards it was worst than what it really was guys. Bottom line Romney is on record stating he would have it down to 6 percent if he were elected I guess his 6 percent would have been artificial as well ? Originally Posted by wellendowed1911
We have the lowest job participation rate in decades, so it would have depended on that had Romney won.
WTF's Avatar
  • WTF
  • 07-29-2014, 06:18 PM
JD must have gotten fired from his janitorial job...
JD Barleycorn's Avatar
As I have posted numerous of times you can use that logic any time - if the UE rate was 5 percent one can easily say the real unemployment rate is 10 percent because you are always going to have an outlier of people who have stopped looking for work so the OP post was basically a waste of time. So when Bush had the UE rate spiraling upwards it was worst than what it really was guys. Bottom line Romney is on record stating he would have it down to 6 percent if he were elected I guess his 6 percent would have been artificial as well ? Originally Posted by wellendowed1911
What the fuck does that have to do with the original post wee-wee? This is about deception and fraud. Would have Obama have been reelected if unemployment was known to be over 10%?
As I have posted numerous of times you can use that logic any time - if the UE rate was 5 percent one can easily say the real unemployment rate is 10 percent because you are always going to have an outlier of people who have stopped looking for work so the OP post was basically a waste of time. So when Bush had the UE rate spiraling upwards it was worst than what it really was guys. Bottom line Romney is on record stating he would have it down to 6 percent if he were elected I guess his 6 percent would have been artificial as well ? Originally Posted by wellendowed1911

See the blue line? ... that is reality.

cowboy8055's Avatar
Jewish Lawyer's Avatar
They get another chance to fiddle with the numbers each month. They are committed to the lies, though it probably gets complicated to keep up with them all, so the best strategy is to blow off dissenters as nut cases, rather than answer the dissent.
JD Barleycorn's Avatar
My question is what do they do when Obama leaves office (please)? Will his successor post the real numbers or will they feel obliged to post more fake ones so they don't get blamed? If they post the real numbers will the Obamatons realize how they been mislead or will they think there was a 300% increase in a matter of a month? Which brings to mind, will Obama destroy the economy completely in the last couple of months as a spoiler for the next person or to cover up his deceit?
wellendowed1911's Avatar
What the fuck does that have to do with the original post wee-wee? This is about deception and fraud. Would have Obama have been reelected if unemployment was known to be over 10%? Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn
Obama would have won both elections either way IMHO- there were many talking points during the Romney-Obama race that the UE rate was much higher= as I stated during the clinton years when it was 4% it may have been truly 8 percent or heck 10 percent because you are always going to have a large percentage of people who stop looking.
Jewish Lawyer's Avatar
Obama would have won both elections either way IMHO- there were many talking points during the Romney-Obama race that the UE rate was much higher= as I stated during the clinton years when it was 4% it may have been truly 8 percent or heck 10 percent because you are always going to have a large percentage of people who stop looking. Originally Posted by wellendowed1911
Especially when the liberals tell them it isn't their own fault, and the lazy bastards stop looking.
wellendowed1911's Avatar
Especially when the liberals tell them it isn't their own fault, and the lazy bastards stop looking. Originally Posted by Jewish Lawyer
Jewish Lawyer are you a person who converted to judaism or is your family of jewish descent? I mean no disrespect, but basically looking at your post- you are surely in the minority since most jews overwhelming are liberal and vote democrat https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org...l/jewvote.html and that is not even debatable: Now there's nothing wrong with being in the minority, but you surely do a lot of Ass kissing on the GOp side when your own race/religion tends to lean the opposite way.
The main reason i think most Jews vote liberal is that liberals have always supported the rights of all people. Jews have been oppressed before and want to support those who help others. Most Jews do support gay marriage since it is yet another time where rights are being suppressed. Basically Conservatives push a strong white/Christian agenda that jews will never relate to. Heck didn't meagan Kelly from fox news state that jesus was whitE LMFAO!!!
My question is what do they do when Obama leaves office (please)? Will his successor post the real numbers or will they feel obliged to post more fake ones so they don't get blamed? If they post the real numbers will the Obamatons realize how they been mislead or will they think there was a 300% increase in a matter of a month? Which brings to mind, will Obama destroy the economy completely in the last couple of months as a spoiler for the next person or to cover up his deceit? Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn
The reality is we are at a point in time where nothing will change. The next president whether he or she will be up front with the inconsistencies of the last administration will depend widely on whether it will be a wise political move or not. Presidents are now nothing more than pitchman for a specific agenda so we never really know if UE statistics or deficits, job creations ect. are really legitimate.

Jim
Jewish Lawyer's Avatar
Jewish Lawyer are you a person who converted to judaism or is your family of jewish descent? I mean no disrespect, but basically looking at your post- you are surely in the minority since most jews overwhelming are liberal and vote democrat https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org...l/jewvote.html and that is not even debatable: Now there's nothing wrong with being in the minority, but you surely do a lot of Ass kissing on the GOp side when your own race/religion tends to lean the opposite way.
The main reason i think most Jews vote liberal is that liberals have always supported the rights of all people. Jews have been oppressed before and want to support those who help others. Most Jews do support gay marriage since it is yet another time where rights are being suppressed. Basically Conservatives push a strong white/Christian agenda that jews will never relate to. Heck didn't meagan Kelly from fox news state that jesus was whitE LMFAO!!! Originally Posted by wellendowed1911
That is one aspect of why Jewish people vote the way we do, but not everyone of us thinks the same way. I get shit all the time for my viewpoint, but they never give me hell when I make a contribution to their favorite cause.
I'm not the only one who thinks people should pull their own weight, though. Poor guys don't get the girl in any culture -unless they are drummers!!

P.S. My mother is Jewish, so that gets me in!