2/04/2011 PERMALINK
Unemployment numbers produced by the US gov have now moved into the realm of pure propaganda. The Global Economic Analysis blog has a good explanation of how the latest alterations in the method used by the US government to compute unemployment has turned that metric into one enormous lie-fest. It is nothing but pure propaganda now.

The unemployment rate (based on the household survey), unexpectedly fell from 9.4% to 9.0%. How did that happen? Based on population growth, the labor force should have been expanding over the course of a year by about 125,000 workers a month, a total of 1.5 million workers. Instead, (for the entire year) the BLS reports that the civilian labor force fell by 167,000. Those not in the labor force rose by 2,094,000. In January alone, a whopping 319,000 people dropped out of the workforce. To get the unemployment rate down from 9.8% to 9.0%, you simply do not count two million workers.

While the Feds show a drop in unemployment last month.  The Gallup Poll, which simply polls and reports unadulterated data, shows that unemployment actually increased to 9.8% at the end of January, up from 9.6% at the end of December. Gallup also finds that there are another 9.1% of American workers seeking full-time employment, but currently only able to find part time jobs.