There is a new jobs report out, with the usual caveats that the work force is shrinking, but the nominal unemployment rate is down to 8.5%. That’s the number which counts politically.
The rate would be 10.9% if the same number of people were in the workforce as when Obama took office.
How about the employment rate -- the most-important number in there, since it controls the taxing capacity of the government.
That's not good -- it's down a touch and has flat-lined now for basically two years.
Here's the problem with this report -- the non-institutional working-age population went from 240.441 million to 240.584, a gain of 143,000 people of working age. But the number of employed people went down from 141.070 million to 140.681 -- a loss of 389,000. Adding the two, which is the correct way to look at it, the economy on a population-adjusted basis lost 532,000 jobs.
It won't surprise anyone that as of December, the real implied unemployment rate was 11.4% (final chart) - basically where it has been ever since 2009 - and at 2.9% delta to reported, represents the widest divergence to reported data since the early 1980s. And because we know this will be the next question, extending this lunacy, America will officially have no unemployed, when the Labor Force Participation rate hits 58.5%, which should be just before the presidential election.
Meh, the prof at LI thinks Newt has the vision, I can't take him too seriously. He had a post about Newt being better than Romney on firearms last week or so. Yes, Newt is a better speaker but look at his votes not his nice stories about history.
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