Unemployment Rate Facts
POSTED BY: JEWELSTAITEFAN
UPDATED: Saturday, September 5, 2026 13:19
VIEWED: 54220
PAGE 2 of 94
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:The Bureau of Labor Statistics says you are mistaken.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
None of those graphs consider underemployment or people who are still unemployed but have stopped making weekly claims once their benefits ran out.
You won't find any official graphs that show any of this information and paint a real picture of the whole situation.
Therefore, anyone making these stats, citing these stats or touting these stats is lying either wittingly or unwittingly.
They do count you, even if your unemployment insurance benefits have stopped because you have been out-of-work too many weeks. There is a long and complicated explanation of how the number of long term unemployed are counted. No, they don’t call 333,000,000 Americans www.census.gov/popclock/ to ask them if they are working. Instead, they ask only 1,000,000 people, each and every month. And then they use statistics to figure out what the other 332,000,000 Americans are working. www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.pdf
What do the unemployment Insurance (Ul) figures measure?
While the UI claims data provide useful information, they are not used to measure total unemployment because they exclude several important groups. To begin with, not all workers are covered by UI programs. For example, self-employed workers, unpaid family workers, workers in certain not-for-profit organizations, and several other small (primarily seasonal) worker categories are not covered. . . .
Because of these and other limitations, statistics on insured unemployment cannot be used as a measure of total unemployment in the United States. Indeed, over the past decade, only about one-third of the total unemployed, on average, received regular UI benefits.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
lol. Um.... nope.
And 60-70 million Americans aren't even old enough to work so they obviously don't even count.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:When the Bureau of Labor Statistics asks, tell them the truth: Do you got a job? Or are you in jail, in the army, in a mental institution (those last 3 don't count as being employed), whatever. "Each month, highly trained and experienced Census Bureau employees contact the 60,000 eligible sample households and ask about the labor force activities (jobholding and job seeking) or non-labor force status of the members of these households. These are live interviews conducted either in person or over the phone." - www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.pdf
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Are the Long-term Unemployed counted among the Marginally Attached to the Labor Force, or counted among the Labor Force, or not counted among either?
That's how unemployment is calculated -- the Bureau of Labor Statistics asks Americans questions. The process cannot produce an incorrect unemployment rate if Americans tell the truth about working or not.
This is an interesting figure:
www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/persons-not-in-the-labor-force
-who-want-a-job.htm
Again, the figure cannot be wrong if Americans tell the truth about wanting a job.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
That's making a hell of a lot of assumptions.
First off, only somewhere around 1-5% of Americans even answer any robo-calls and stick around long enough to talk to anybody on the other side once they figure out who it is.
The people being polled can lie, the bureau can lie, politicians can lie. There is no way of verifying any of this is true at all, so they can make up whatever numbers they want. There is ZERO math involved in what you are proposing is the way that unemployment is calculated. All you are doing is bolstering my argument that the unemployment numbers are total bullshit.
Remember, these were the very same tactics that were used when polling for who was going to be voted in for President. Look how accurate those polls were.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:6ix, you never did click the link and read, did you? If you had: "The survey is designed so that each person age 16 and over (there is no upper age limit) is counted and classified in only one group. The sum of the employed and the unemployed constitutes the civilian labor force." If an American is between 16 and 116, they are counted as employed if they say they are employed when the Bureau of Labor Statistics asks them: "Are you employed or not?" Below 16 does not count. If you tell the Bureau you do not want to work then you do not count. The Bureau takes your word as truth of whether you are employed, not employed, or the third group: out-of-the-work-force-by-your-own-choice-because-work-sucks-and-you-refuse-to-be-a-wage-slave-and-cannot-live-chained-to-a-job.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
lol. Um.... nope.
And 60-70 million Americans aren't even old enough to work so they obviously don't even count.
www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.pdf
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Quote:The Bureau of Labor Statistics polls 110,000 people. A political survey might be hundreds. And if you lie about being employed when you are not, well, you are employed. What is the Bureau to do about assholes that lie about everything? Give 'em job? Let the liars stay unemployed.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
That's making a hell of a lot of assumptions.
First off, only somewhere around 1-5% of Americans even answer any robo-calls and stick around long enough to talk to anybody on the other side once they figure out who it is.
The people being polled can lie, the bureau can lie, politicians can lie. There is no way of verifying any of this is true at all, so they can make up whatever numbers they want. There is ZERO math involved in what you are proposing is the way that unemployment is calculated. All you are doing is bolstering my argument that the unemployment numbers are total bullshit.
Remember, these were the very same tactics that were used when polling for who was going to be voted in for President. Look how accurate those polls were.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, you never did click the link and read, did you? If you had: "The survey is designed so that each person age 16 and over (there is no upper age limit) is counted and classified in only one group. The sum of the employed and the unemployed constitutes the civilian labor force." If an American is between 16 and 116, they are counted as employed if they say they are employed when the Bureau of Labor Statistics asks them: "Are you employed or not?" Below 16 does not count. If you tell the Bureau you do not want to work then you do not count. The Bureau takes your word as truth of whether you are employed, not employed, or the third group: out-of-the-work-force-by-your-own-choice-because-work-sucks-and-you-refuse-to-be-a-wage-slave-and-cannot-live-chained-to-a-job.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
lol. Um.... nope.
And 60-70 million Americans aren't even old enough to work so they obviously don't even count.
www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.pdf
I'm not talking about the link. I'm talking about your figure of 330+ million Americans, which included children.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:The Bureau of Labor Statistics polls 110,000 people. A political survey might be hundreds. And if you lie about being employed when you are not, well, you are employed. What is the Bureau to do about assholes that lie about everything? Give 'em job? Let the liars stay unemployed.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
That's making a hell of a lot of assumptions.
First off, only somewhere around 1-5% of Americans even answer any robo-calls and stick around long enough to talk to anybody on the other side once they figure out who it is.
The people being polled can lie, the bureau can lie, politicians can lie. There is no way of verifying any of this is true at all, so they can make up whatever numbers they want. There is ZERO math involved in what you are proposing is the way that unemployment is calculated. All you are doing is bolstering my argument that the unemployment numbers are total bullshit.
Remember, these were the very same tactics that were used when polling for who was going to be voted in for President. Look how accurate those polls were.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
No. It doesn't poll 110,000 people. Assuming they even bother to call 110,000 people, almost nobody is going to pick up the phone and of those that do only a very tiny fraction will co-operate with the poll.
It doesn't matter if the people on the phone lie, or even what they say about it. There is no way to track who answered what and that information has never been made available and transparent to the public.
If you're going to keep up with this line of dialogue on how the information is collected, then you're only proving my argument true. Since math is not used at all via this very unscientific method, there is no way anybody could look at those figures and believe them to be true.
It's a political tool, nothing more and nothing less. The Democrats can celebrate the numbers when they're in and demonize them when they're out. Same for Republicans.
Trump called them bullshit before he was President. Now he celebrates them.
They're still bullshit, Mr. President.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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BLS does a horrendous job of identifying and defining their stats. Second was helpful above by linking to a different page that provided definition, which the raw data table did not. So BLS currently defines the Want A Job category as not being part of the Labor Force.
I have re-done the first post with this new information.
The numbers are called Unemployment figures, and those are regularly redefined. At one time Active Duty Military Personnel were classified as unemployed. Obama's BLS has worked diligently to obfuscate the dismal performance of Obamanomics.
So I will post some actual numbers and let the comparisons and discussion follow. The documented shenanigans of Obamabots deliberately refusing to Report jobless data in the months before the 2012 Election are a different matter, I will just use the Fake Data they produced and pretend it was real.
The BLS uses both Seasonally Adjusted figures and Unadjusted figures, and interchanges them without clearly identifying so. For example, the current Rate of 4.1% (for 4 months straight) is SeasAdj, and the real Rate is 4.5% for Jan 2018. I will use only the Unadjusted numbers, to help maintain clarity and transparency.
Some numbers may have a 0 placed as first digit, to maintain column form in this format.
The 1st column of numbers is the unemployed. The 2nd column is the Rate.
The 3rd column is what is called the Want A Job Now category but is NOT included in the Labor Force category and therefore excluded from the reported Unemployment category. The 5th column is the sum of Unemployed plus Want A Job - which more accurately represents the Actual Unemployed. The 6th column is the Rate for column 5 figure.
The 7th column is the Involuntary Part-Time workers, who are Not Employed Full Time due to poor Economy, and want, are able to work FT. The 8th column is the sum of the 5th column plus 7th column. 9th column is the Rate for column 8 figure.
The 10th column is the Civilian Population. 11th column is Labor Force, 12th column is Participation Rate.
Figures in thousands.
Mo/Year Unemp Pcnt WAJb Pcnt SubTtl Prcnt InvPT Pcnt Total Percnt CivPop LbrForc Prtc%
Jan2008 08221 05.4% 4977 3.2% 13198 08.6% 5235 3.5% 18433 12.1% 232616 152828 65.7
Jan2009 13009 08.5% 5866 3.8% 18875 12.3% 8675 5.7% 27550 18.0% 234739 153445 65.4
Jan2010 16147 10.6% 6108 4.0% 22255 14.6% 9161 5.9% 31416 20.5% 236832 152957 64.6
Jan2011 14937 09.8% 6643 4.3% 21580 14.1% 9027 6.0% 30607 20.1% 238704 152536 63.9
Jan2012 13541 08.8% 6495 4.3% 20036 13.1% 8747 5.7% 28783 18.8% 242269 153485 63.4
Jan2013 13181 08.5% 6781 4.4% 19962 12.9% 8506 5.5% 28468 18.4% 244663 154794 63.3
Jan2014 10855 07.0% 6508 4.2% 17363 11.2% 7617 5.0% 24980 16.2% 246915 154381 62.5
Jan2015 09498 06.1% 6467 4.1% 15965 10.2% 7125 4.6% 23090 14.8% 249723 156050 62.5
Jan2016 08309 05.3% 6166 3.9% 14475 09.2% 6234 4.0% 20709 13.2% 252397 157347 62.3
Jan2017 08149 05.1% 5934 3.8% 14083 08.9% 6127 3.8% 20210 12.7% 254082 158676 62.5
Jan2018 07189 04.5% 5364 3.3% 12553 07.8% 5380 3.4% 17933 11.2% 256780 160037 62.3%
Jul 2012 13400 08.6% 6837 4.3% 20237 12.9% 8218 5.3% 28455 18.2% 243354 156526 64.3
Aug2012 12696 08.2% 7631 4.9% 20327 13.1% 7723 5.0% 28050 18.1% 243566 155255 63.7
Sep2012 11742 07.6% 6427 4.1% 18169 11.7% 8003 5.2% 26172 16.9% 243772 155075 63.6
Oct2012 11741 07.5% 6142 4.0% 17883 11.5% 7768 5.0% 25651 16.5% 243983 155779 63.8
Nov2012 11404 07.4% 6495 4.2% 17899 11.6% 7898 5.0% 25797 16.6% 244174 154953 63.5
Comparing to The Great Depression: the Unemployment peaked in 1933 at 24.75% with 12.830 Million unemployed. In 1932 there were 12.060 M unemployed, and 11.340M in 1934, 10.610 in 1935.
The 5 year stretch from 2009 to 2014 exceeded 12.9 Million each year, more Unemployed than the Great Depression. And 2014-2017 was only less with the Fake figure, but including Want A Job was still more than Great Depression, until 2018.
2010 and 2011 had Total percentages (over 20%) greater than every Great Depression year except 1933 & 1934.
The Civilian Adult Popul
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Quote:Your first issue is Underemployment, which is comprised of 3 components.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
If you'd like to look into it a bit yourself, I suggest looking at Underemployment as a starter. It's probably the biggest factor in why the current unemployment rate statistics are a lie.Quote:
Underemployment (or disguised unemployment) is the under-use of a worker due to a job that does not use the worker's skills, or is part time, or leaves the worker idle. Examples include holding a part-time job despite desiring full-time work, and overqualification, where the employee has education, experience, or skills beyond the requirements of the job
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underemployment
Probably the second largest reason the unemployment numbers are a lie is because they only count people who are actively handing in reports every week about their unemployment status to draw an unemployment check.
My last unemployment stint was just under 2 1/2 years long. Only 6 months of that time I was considered unemployed. Now that I have a part-time job that number didn't change at all, simply because I already was considered not part of unemployment for that reason. However, had I gotten that part time job immediately after being laid off from my great full time job I would not be considered unemployed (and they don't ever factor underemployment in the statistics that are presented to the public).
This second part is something that Trump used to talk about when he said the unemployment numbers were bullshit before he was president. Funny how he doesn't talk about that anymore though, innit?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
One component is Involuntary Part-Time employment, which I have already included.
The other 2 components are Overstaffing and Overqualified. Neither of these have been reported by BLS as far as I can find. With no history of these concepts being represented or reported as being parts of Unemployment data, it is not reasonable to imagine that the data is or was falsely misrepresented with these concepts. If the Unemployment figures have been reported through history without ever considering these ideas, then continuing to Report figures under the same standards is not a plausible claim of Fake Data.
Your second issue is non-reporting Unemployed, which is a category included in the Want A Job category, and I have included this category in my table.
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Do you agree with Second's assessment that they get the data by calling 110,000 households per month?
If you do, I'll ask you a simple question.
Why do you suppose they would do that when they've already proven themselves perfectly capable of figuring how much money everyone was making, whether they were employed or self employed, back in the days when they gave us our social security reports that detailed exactly how much money we made every year, how much we paid into social security, and how much we would get per month depending on which age we decided to retire?
They already have that data, presented it to us on a yearly basis using actual MATH, and have been able to compile it for decades. Why waste what must be millions or even 10's of millions of dollars per year doing something as unscientific as random robo-calls on a very small percentage of citizens if they already had nearly 100% of the data just because of our income taxes and social security payments?
My answer is, because they can just make up anything they want to when there is no actual math being used.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Here's an example of what those mailers look like if you forgot. Page 3 being the most important part with all of the information they'd need to determine everything without making a single phone call. (I only put up to page 3, but you can get the rest at the link on the bottom).
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v74n2/v74n2p1.html
Quote:
In recent years, funding constraints and technological developments have brought major changes to the Statement. In February 2012, SSA resumed mailing printed Statements to workers aged 60 or older, following a suspension that began in March 2011 to conserve agency funds. Then, in May 2012, SSA introduced an online version of the Statement. The agency also made a one-time mailing of the Statement in July to workers aged 25 in 2012. In October 2012, SSA again suspended Statement mailings for budgetary reasons, and relied on the online version to provide workers with immediate access to their earnings records, estimated benefits, and other information. In September 2014, the agency resumes mailing a revised and redesigned version of the printed Statement to workers of selected ages.
I wasn't even aware that you could get these statements online. I thought they had stopped mailing them out around the time they were telling people under 55 that they wouldn't even get social security when they retire. You learn something new everyday.
I can't wait to see mine. My income is like a rollercoaster when viewed over the years. Good on Wanda Worker in the sample document. Somehow she's managed to increase her earnings every single year of her working life. I bet most people's statements don't look so neat.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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