January 8 Unemployment Numbers

Unemployment rate holds steady at 10%. Good news....Right?

Now the truth..

December Payrolls fall by 85,000

Read the full report at:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

Ok, so why the spin??? One can guess. Truth is that Real Unemployment grew:

The "real" unemployment rate (or U6) rose to 17.3% up from 17%. In addition, the average duration of unemployment rose to 29.1 weeks as the ranks of the long-term (or "permanently") unemployed continue. The labor force is shrinking due to people being permenantly unemployed. In sum, fewer people are working, more and more Americans are dropping out of the labor pool and those who are working are working fewer hours.

On the positive side, the official Bureau of Labor December 2008 job losses were 524,000 jobs, so we are a whole lot improved over that...at least so far.

U6 unemployment measures all unemployment, including: the permenantly unemployed (have given up looking and have exhausted unemployment benefits; and those who are underemployed (basically former full time workers working for much less due to fewer hours or major reduction in pay).

U6 unemployment for December 2008 was at 13.5%. The January 2009 U6 number is 17.3%.

According to private sources, retailers hired 547,000workers for the holiday season in 2009. Job losses outpaced job gaines by 85,000.

The truth is that a more accurate assessment of job losses will be measured in the coming months. The deterioration has slowed, but we are still deteriorating.

Looking at the number another way, by using Bureau of Labor statitics:

The civilian work force declined in December 2009 by:

589,000 workers

The supply population of potential workers increased by 333,000 people (immigrants, college grads, net difference between new workers of age subtracted by death/retirements).

So, in other words: the Government through selectively looking at statistics is ignoring the fact non employed people in the US grew by nearly a million people, a far cry from the 85,000 reported by "official" methods.