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Guest
The lie: "Eight million Americans have dropped out of the work force since (Barack) Obama became president. ... The real unemployment rate is 19 percent."
Restore Our Future on Wednesday, September 19th, 2012 in a campaign ad
Everybody knows the jobs bounceback from the most recent recession has been frustratingly modest.
But have eight million Americans really "dropped out of the work force since Obama became president"?
Has that left the "real" unemployment rate at 19 percent?
Restore Our Future, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment on what went into the group’s calculation.
But what does this number really mean?
For starters, it’s actually not a measurement of people who "can’t find jobs".
In addition to discouraged job-seekers, it includes parents who decided to become a full-time mom or dad.
It includes people who have decided to go back to school, and it includes people who have chosen to retire.
There’s no question that some of these decisions may have been influenced by a perception of weak job prospects ahead.
But people make these career-changing decisions all the time; if you’re going to lay the blame for a shrinking workforce on today’s economy, it’s important to tell how much more common labor-market departures are now compared to what would have been happening in a more "normal" job market.
The retirement numbers are particularly important, given the aging of the baby-boomer workforce.
That’s a whole lot higher than the more familiar 8.1 percent unemployment rate, but it’s also well below the 19 percent claimed in the ad.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...omney-aligned-group-says-real-unemployment-r/
Restore Our Future on Wednesday, September 19th, 2012 in a campaign ad
Everybody knows the jobs bounceback from the most recent recession has been frustratingly modest.
But have eight million Americans really "dropped out of the work force since Obama became president"?
Has that left the "real" unemployment rate at 19 percent?
Restore Our Future, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment on what went into the group’s calculation.
But what does this number really mean?
For starters, it’s actually not a measurement of people who "can’t find jobs".
In addition to discouraged job-seekers, it includes parents who decided to become a full-time mom or dad.
It includes people who have decided to go back to school, and it includes people who have chosen to retire.
There’s no question that some of these decisions may have been influenced by a perception of weak job prospects ahead.
But people make these career-changing decisions all the time; if you’re going to lay the blame for a shrinking workforce on today’s economy, it’s important to tell how much more common labor-market departures are now compared to what would have been happening in a more "normal" job market.
The retirement numbers are particularly important, given the aging of the baby-boomer workforce.
- Currently, the U-6 rate of "labor underutilization" -- which is the broadest measure of unemployment and under-employment that BLS calculates -- is 14.7 percent.
That’s a whole lot higher than the more familiar 8.1 percent unemployment rate, but it’s also well below the 19 percent claimed in the ad.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...omney-aligned-group-says-real-unemployment-r/