Manipulating Numbers

Recent unemployment numbers came out at 7.2 percent with a total job loss for 2008 at 2.6 million the highest since WWll.

According to economist Jared Bernstein in his book “Crunch, Why Do I Feel So Squeezed” who said “when all the people who are no longer collecting unemployment, those workers who have given up looking for work and all the part time workers who prefer full time are counted the real unemployment rate is around 12%”. And he said this before these numbers were released.

Now we’re hearing talk in the news that unemployment may reach double digits, it already is in double digits, so what will it really be, twenty five percent like during the Great Depression?

During the dust bowl in places like Oklahoma during the ‘30’s the California farmers would advertise for more jobs than they needed workers. This way if someone wanted ten cents an hour someone else would work for five cents an hour. Same thing today with the outsourcing of our jobs, we cannot compete with people who are willing to work for so much less than we can afford to work for. And it isn’t only blue collar jobs being outsourced, if your job can be digitized it can be outsourced, we’re losing all color jobs.

With the passage of NAFTA, CAFTA and with Bush as president changing the overtime laws to favor employers our federal government has helped to undermine the employment situation in this country, then they lie about the numbers.

Maybe if the Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan had been more concerned about full employment rather than have all his attention fixated on inflation along with keeping interest rates too low for too long we wouldn’t be in the position we’re in now; with the financial crisis blamed on sub prime mortgage holders defaulting on their loans which led to all these job losses, which is questionable at best.

President elect Obama is already manipulating numbers, now he’s going to bring 4.1 million jobs to our country up from the three million he said he’d bring during his campaign.

It remains to be seen how many jobs he can actually bring, but as the saying goes, talk is cheap.