[rescue] Employed - Unemployed numbers on the Rescue List

[Bob Keyes]

On Sat, 18 Oct 2003, Dieter Montanez wrote:

> > employed = 33
> > unemployed = 9

10. I missed the poll first time around.

> It's higher than the *officially reported* national average, which is
> generated from quite unashamedly cooked numbers.  An expert interviewed
> on NPR recently stated that, as a consequence of the way they are
> generated, the FedGov's numbers are low by almost 50%, because they do
> not count people whose unemployment benefits have run out and who are
> not currently actively participating in government-backed work-search
> programs as unemployed, let alone people who've given up and stopped
> looking altogether.  Federal "unemployment" numbers could be better
> described as numbers of those receiving government unemployment
> assistance -- to say they truly represent the number of people who don't
> have a job and want one is almost as bad as saying that you can obtain
> the number of people currently hospitalized simply by tallying the
> number of surgeries performed today.

This is what I've always said...lying with statistics is what they're
doing. I just hope that the number of people fooled by thinking unemployment is
dropping will now turn around and through mass delusion actually make it
happen. Of course, as much as I want a job, I want a decent economy, I
don't want it to happen just in time to get GW Bush elected. Because
that's the only thing The People care about, the economy.