On Friday, the entire financial world celebrated when it was announced that the unemployment rate in the United States had fallen to 8.3 percent. That is the lowest it has been since February 2009, and it came as an unexpected surprise for financial markets that are hungry for some good news. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nonfarm payrolls jumped by 243,000 during the month of January. You can read the full employment report right here. Based on this news, pundits all over the world were declaring that the U.S. economy is back. Stocks continued to rise on Friday and the Dow is hovering near a 4 year high. So does this mean that our economic problems are over? Of course not. A closer look at the numbers reveals just how fraudulent these employment statistics really are. Between December 2011 and January 2012, the number of Americans "not in the labor force" increased by a whopping 1.2 million. That was the largest increase ever in that category for a single month. That is how the federal government is getting the unemployment rate to go down. The government is simply pretending that huge numbers of unemployed Americans don't want to be part of the labor force anymore. As you will see below, the employment situation in America is not improving. Yet everyone in the mainstream media is dancing around as if the economic crisis has been cancelled. I can't take it anymore! It is beyond ridiculous that so many intelligent people continue to buy in to such fraudulent numbers.
The truth is that the labor force participation rate declined dramatically in January. For those unfamiliar with this statistic, the labor force participation rate is the percentage of working age Americans that are either employed or that are unemployed and considered to be looking for a job.
As you can see from the chart posted below, the labor force participation rate rose steadily between 1970 and 2000. That happened because large numbers of women were entering the labor force for the first time.
The labor force participation rate peaked at a little more then 67 percent in the late 90s. Between 2000 and the start of the recent recession, it declined slightly to about 66 percent.
Since then, it has been dropping like a rock. The chart below does not even include the latest data. In January, the labor force participation rate was only 63.7 percent. That is the lowest that is has been since May 1983. So keep that in mind as you view the chart.
In reality, the percentage of men and women in the United States that would like to have jobs is almost certainly about the same as it was back in 2007 or 2008. There has been no major social change that would cause large numbers of men or women to want to give up their careers. So there is something very, very fishy with this chart....
Read more:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/i-cant-take-it-anymore-when-will-the-government-quit-putting-out-fraudulent-employment-statistics
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