Source: Hawaii Reporter
The Recovery That Isn’t
Does anyone believe “official” unemployment statistics anymore? Or has the contrast between real-world experience and the claims of press releases and government officials finally made it clear that no amount of statistical tap dancing is going to cover up the truth any longer. The key, of course, being the manipulation of the statistics. As 87% of those reading this know, 42% of published statistics are completely incomprehensible. Like that stat I just made up. What we really need to do is consider what information is being left out of the official statistics being offered to us. Consider, for example, this essay from the National Center for Policy Analysis on a better way to evaluate unemployment. The official stats don’t account for people who have become discouraged, stopped looking for work, etc. So in order to truly claim a rise in employment, we need to see a corresponding drop in this otherwise untracked number. (Not that I can blame the Administration for avoiding it—who wants to publicize the number of people who have so lost hope in your promises for “recovery” that they’ve just given up?)