I'm sure that question about why it doesn't matter to our leaders was rhetorical, but it sure would be great to have leaders with the stones to answer the question honestly anyway.

I've heard many times that 4% is considered full employment, and I bet that has something to do with it. If we called it the way it was, our leaders would have to admit we were really somewhere up near 15 to 20% unemployment. But if we delude the masses into thinking the number's really only 5.5%, we can argue that however bad it seems, we're still pretty close to "full employment."

It's eerily like the definition of "recession." No matter how bad it gets, we're not in a recession until a specific combination of X, Y and Z happen. Even as millions are being thrown out of their homes, taking out payday loans and second mortgages to pay for gas--as long as the numbers can be twisted otherwise, we're all doing just fine. Or so we're told.

As usual, statistics telling the part of the story that the teller wants you to hear.

There is a perverse poetry in listening to someone twist numbers.

It's harder to twist people, and their stories. That is the truth that matters to me.

Why doesn't it matter to our "leaders?"

Just some random thoughts.

H

This is just a vague reference to the changes in unemployment calculation that were instituted by the BLS a few years back.

Basically, they counted anyone who exhausted their unemployment benefits without finding a new job as being out of the workforce. For a more realistic view of unemployment, you'd probably be better off going by the Fed's Augmented Unemployment Rate, which doesn't kick people off the unemployment rolls simply because they aren't collecting benefits anymore.