The United State Governments Labor Department continues to bombard us with propaganda about how our economy is getting better. Their latest report specifies that unemployment aid applications have dropped by 15,000 this week. This means only 358,000 application were filed, the lowest since 2008. That’s exciting!, you mean 15,000 people finally realized they were not going to get any help and gave up?
I guess I shouldn’t be so pessimistic though, perhaps Walmart broke down and decided to open another register. Now the wait will only be ten minutes at the checkout and Larry will be bringing home over $21,000 this year after four years of college! It’s okay Uncle Sam, we understand you had to vote yourselves a raise while still doing a horrible job of making good decisions for your people.
According to experts it is a good sign when applications stay consistently below 375,000. In fact, the economy added 243,000 jobs in January. This number is dwarfed though by the reported 13 million Americans that still don’t have jobs. Actually, the government only reports people as unemployed if they report that they are still actively looking for jobs. So you can bet that the number is much higher. Or maybe some people just neglected to renew their unemployment forms because they’re too busy trying to earn money elsewhere.
I wonder also, how many people in this country are considered to be underemployed? I see a lot of qualified people working in mindless high-turnover positions.What are the proper stats on that at the Labor Department? So to clarify the main point, using the four-week adjusted average, for accuracy, the number of unemployment aid applications fell to 366,250 this week. Why even report this? Are they trying to make us feel better?