I rarely agree with Fox News anymore...about anything, but there's one thing you can count on. If Fox News ever finds something to discredit the Obama administration, they will let us know all about it.
Take for example the one-time $500 million Bush-created and Obama-implemented Solyndra debacle to subsidize solar panels - - even though the GOP consistently subsidizes big oil to the tune of $4 billion every year.
Or take for example the current high cost of gas, even though Obama has no control over oil prices, and they were also higher under George W. Bush in July of 2008.
Or even the recent General Services Administration scandal on wasting $820,000 on an extravagant trip to Las Vegas...even though the GSA has been involved in several other scandals under both political parties going back many years.
But this time, Fox News is correct in pointing out the misleading unemployment numbers (even though, under both political parties, this also occurs. It's called "politics").
Today on the Fox News channel they said that if the true unemployment numbers were reported, the real unemployment rate would be closer to 10.1% - - although I believe this to be much higher (See my links below)
Here are excerpts from two of Fox News recent reports regarding the unemployment numbers:
"People are only counted as unemployed if they have been actively looking for work in the past four weeks. It is good news when the number of unemployed falls due to more hires. It is not so good if the number falls due to people giving up looking for work...the number of working age Americans not in the labor force rose by 7.14 million."
"It does not include the number of people who have become discouraged and are just not looking for a job at all. Almost 4 million people are in that group. Another 8 million have been forced to take only part time work even though they want a full time job. If those people were counted, officials say, the latest rate of 8.3 percent would be much higher-- at 15.1 percent."
"There are 6 million fewer jobs than there were at the beginning of the recession. Fewer Americans are actually participating in the workforce than in almost 28 years. The labor force participation rate is only 63.7 percent, hasn't been this low since March of 1983."
According to the New York Times (who was quoting the Bureau of Labor Statistics) in October of 2009 about 10 million Americans were at one time receiving either state or federal benefits. And if only half qualified, then a little over 2 years ago we had AT LEAST 20 million people unemployed at that time.
Consider this:
- Two and half years ago in October of 2009 the unemployment rate was reported at 10.2% when 15.9 Americans were reported unemployed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (the highest in 26 years).
- The White House says at least 18 million people (at some time or another during Obama's term) benefited from federal extended benefits.
- Since that time Obama said 3.7 million jobs were created, and since October of 2009 there were another 6 million high school and college graduates.
- Currently the U.S. Department of Labor reports 3.4 million job openings and only 12.7 million Americans are unemployed.
Like Obama says, "It's math", and the numbers don't add up.
The reason for Fox News' numbers are mostly correct, but I
don't concur with Fox News that Obama is in any way to blame for the high
unemployment numbers. This was a long time in the making under Republican
policies (the reasons are numerous and well-documented all throughout my blog).
15 Million Americans Jobless Over 2 years
http://bud-meyers.blogspot.com/2012/01/15-million-americans-jobless-over-2.html
Where did 15 million jobless Americans go?
http://bud-meyers.blogspot.com/2011/12/where-did-15-million-jobless-americans.html
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