-By Warner Todd Huston
Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge asks an interesting question about the latest jobs data that the Obama administration has released to the public — and to a mostly unquestioning Old Media. As Durden calculates it, 3.5 million workers have mysteriously disappeared from the work force. If this is true then the unemployment rate is a lot higher than that being bandied about by the administration.
According to Durden the data show that there is actually a workforce of 157.4 million workers as opposed to the 153.9 million that the administration has claimed. So, where did 3.5 million workers go?
Durden says, “labor force participation has now dropped to the lowest rate it has been since 1984, at 64.5%. Assuming a reversion to the long-term average participation rate of 66%, means that the civilian labor force is in reality 157.4 million as opposed to the disclosed 153.9 million, a delta of 3.5 million currently unaccounted for.”
After that, Durden had a question for President Obama. “Maybe someone can ask the president during his imminent press conference what happened to the unemployed population, which would have been 18.3 if this labor force delta was incorporated, resulting in an unemployment rate of 11.6%.”
Would it be a surprise if the Obama administration has fiddled with the numbers to present a false image of just how bad it is out there?
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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