Gallup Chief on Obama’s ‘Falling Unemployment’: It’s a ‘big lie’

The White House, economists and media pundits are celebrating the latest unemployment numbers coming out of the Department of Labor. According to the federal department, the unemployment once again dipped, this time to 5.6 percent, a figure that President Obama is celebrating and taking credit for.

As many have previously argued, the jobless rate calculated by Washington is incorrect and the way bureaucrats measure unemployment is unscrupulous and disingenuous. One polling chief believes the 5.6 percent unemployment is one “big lie” since it’s incredibly “misleading.”

Jim Clifton, chief executive officer and chairman of polling firm Gallup, wrote in a blog post about how the government really determines the monthly jobless rate.

“None of them will tell you this: If you, a family member or anyone is unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a job — if you are so hopelessly out of work that you’ve stopped looking over the past four weeks — the Department of Labor doesn’t count you as unemployed,” said Clifton. “Right now, as many as 30 million Americans are either out of work or severely underemployed. Trust me, the vast majority of them aren’t throwing parties to toast ‘falling’ unemployment.”

Clifton continued that those individuals out of work for at least four weeks are “as unemployed as can be” and added that there are approximately 30 million Americans who are out of work or severely underemployed.

The severely underemployed, who are workers who work part-time but want to be full-time employed, aren’t included in the unemployment statistics.

Since the government omits the long-term, permanently and depressingly unemployed from its numbers, the unemployment rate can be described simply as a “Big Lie.”

“When the media, talking heads, the White House and Wall Street start reporting the truth – the percent of Americans in good jobs, jobs that are full time and real – then we will quit wondering why Americans aren’t ‘feeling’ something that doesn’t remotely reflect the reality in their lives,” Clifton further wrote. “And we will also quit wondering what hollowed out the middle class.”

At least someone in the media is finally realizing just how dubious government statistics are.

The labor force participation rate is something that people should look at. It stands at 62.7 percent, the lowest since 1978.