Unemployment Didn’t Decrease, Really.
If you actually remotely cared the government says that unemployment decreased from 9.7 to 9.5% for the month of June according numbers released today.
This is not an accurate description of the situation since 652,000 workers were completely wiped off of the job search statistic. These are also mostly people who are watching their unemployment benefits expire this week. In addition to those 652,000 workers, another new 125,000 have found themselves jobless.
Another way of putting this over on the public is to say unemployment went down because there are too many of you to count. The number I like to look at is the U-6 number supplied by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number also “decreased” from 16.6 to 16.5% in June, as any number would when you leave out 652,000 unemployed workers.
Seriously don’t take it from me though, Vice President Biden best said it himself “there’s no possibility to restore 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession“.
So readers, ask an unemployed person you know if they got a job (they probably didn’t) and report back.