In December, 929,000 out-of-work Americans did their part to help the Obama administration, staying out of the official unemployment figures by not looking for a job.
The old way that unemployment went down was when people moved from the unemployed to the employed. A recovering economy would do that. The new way under the Obama administration is for the unemployed to move to the discouraged category where they stop looking for a job because they have no hope of finding one. Thus, they are no longer counted in unemployment numbers, and the employment picture will either look better or not look as bad. But it will be bad no matter whether it looks that way or not because no jobs are being created or saved. Instead, jobs are being discouraged.
Jim Geraghty video: An incorrigible way of counting unemployment.
The speaker makes it sound as if this method of counting unemployment is something dreamed up by the Obama administration. To the contary, unemployment has been measured this way for decades. When an unemployed worker stops looking for work, he is no longer counted as part of the work force; thus unemployment drops. But in contrast, when the economy improves, and many unemployed people flow back into the work force, unemployment grows. This is not a sinister plot by Obama.
But it is a predictable result of Obamanomics and Obama is the architect of that.
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