Everyone  knows that the federal government uses some new kind of weird math when  releasing statistics and details. This could not be better seen than  with the muck and mire that's attached each time the government comes  out with new job figures and unemployment percentages.

Officially,  the current US unemployment rate stands at 8.2%. Totally unacceptable  and higher than the 7.9% rate when President Barack Obama took office.  Some economist and labor exports put the "real" unemployment rate closer  to 9.6%.

Why such differences in what is and the numbers reported?

We  keep hearing about all the new jobs being created yet in 2009 when the  President took office there were 133.6 million people employed. Today  that figure is 132.7 million. That means there over 1 million people no  longer employed that once were employed.

Mark  Landsbaum writing in the Orange County Register has an interesting  piece on the figures and points out how the current Administration has  even redefined what the term "unemployed" means.

Government massages the statistics to make it seem the employment picture is improving much faster than it is in the Obama era.
 
President  Barack Obama understands that it's the economy. And he's not stupid.  But he is sly, which is a polite way of saying, he doesn't tell the  whole truth. The Obama administration, with an assist from compliant  mainstream news outlets, doesn't dare come clean on economic matters.  That could cost him his job in November.

The administration  deceptively conceals from people the true monumental decline in the  number of working Americans. Simultaneously, the White House  misleadingly reduces the official unemployment rate using an accounting  sleight of hand. Perhaps most egregious, the president pretends the  worsening situation is improving, which is like telling passengers  everything's peachy as the ship sinks.

All administrations engage in similar fast shuffles. But as deceptions go, Obama shows rare mastery.

"One  of the highly developed talents of President Barack Obama is the  ability to say things that are demonstrably false, and make them sound  not only plausible but inspiring," economist Thomas Sowell writes. "On  this and on many other issues, you would have to know what the facts are  to know that he is lying. He is obviously counting on the fact that, in  this era of dumbed-down education, many people have no clue as to what  the facts are. He is also counting on something else – namely, that the  pro-Obama media will not expose his lies. One of the many ways of lying  smoothly is to simply redefine words. Barack Obama is a master at that  as well."

One word Obama redefines is "unemployment." One might  think that to be unemployed means simply to not have a job. Au  contraire, says the White House.

The government counts people out  of work in a way most people wouldn't. In fact, if out-of-work people  get discouraged enough to quit looking for jobs, the government no  longer considers them unemployed for purposes of that widely reported  percentage. And it's that reported unemployment percentage that grabs  headlines.

We wonder if the unemployed realize it's so easy to  end their plight. Simply no longer look for work. Then they'd no longer  be unemployed. At least by White House logic.

What would the  unemployment rate look like if those workers were added back into the  mix? Economist John Lott says if those who have given up looking for  jobs and those who have settled for part-time work are included in the  unemployment calculation, the unemployment rate actually is nearly 1  percent higher than the government's official statistic.

You  won't read this atop a White House press release. The Bureau of Labor  Statistics reports fewer Americans are working today than when Obama was  sworn in: 132.7 million now versus 133.6 million in 2009. That's nearly  a million fewer workers on the job.

Even by the government's  carefully prepared (dare we say, "doctored?") numbers, there were 12.8  million unemployed in February compared with 11.6 million in January  2009 when the president took office. By Obama's own count, the number of  people he considers unemployed increased by more than a million.  Imagine what he could do with two terms in office.

Let's recap:  Since Obama came to office, there are nearly 1 million fewer people on  the job, and more than 1 million more people officially unemployed.

Then  there is this: The number of unemployed Americans in January declined  by a substantial amount: 339,000, a figure the administration trumpeted.  But that decline occurred only because a shockingly larger number –  almost 1.2 million additional Americans – were reclassified by the  government in January as no longer being in the labor force.

"Unfortunately,"  economist Lott noted at the time, "that has been the consistent story  that has made this 'recovery' unique, as more and more Americans have  just given up looking for work."

Another 164,000 Americans  dropped out of the labor force last month. These join the 1.2 million  reported in January who had quit looking for work, and consequently are  no longer counted when bureaucrats calculate the official unemployment  rate.

March demonstrated in microcosm the perversity of the Obama  job-counting scam. The government again reduced the pool of people in  the job market by no longer counting some of the jobless, in that way  permitting even a disappointing increase in new jobs to show an  improvement in the unemployment rate. We guess that if they do enough of  this, the nation theoretically could end up with no one left in the  labor force but effectively achieve full employment. They could destroy  the job market to save it.

"It is hard to celebrate a lower  unemployment rate that is the direct result of fewer people actually  working," noted Gary Bauer of the Campaign for Working Families. "Yet  this is the reality of Obama's economic 'recovery.'"

So, what's the real Obama jobs track record?

In  2009 he signed a stimulus package intended to create "or save" 4  million jobs and bring the unemployment rate down to 6 percent. The rate  now is 8.2 percent, even by deceptive bookkeeping, and there are almost  1 million fewer people working.

Since January 2009, according to  the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 5 million people have dropped  out of the labor force, reportedly the greatest decline on record. Only  10 percent to 20 percent of those are young people opting to stay in  school. The vast majority are people dropping out because they simply  can't find jobs and have quit looking, says Brian Holte, economist at  the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

The labor force ranged  from 66 percent to 67 percent of working-age Americans under the Clinton  and both Bush administrations. It has declined to 63.7 percent this  year, the lowest percentage in 29 years. That means one in three  working-age Americans, 88 million in all, no longer are in the  workforce.

http://ocregister.com/opinion/percent-349194-obama-people.html

So what are we to make of all this?

Are we to give the Obama Administration a pass on the economic recovery and job increases being reported?

Should we just take the government's word for it, when it tells us we are better off and could have been worse?

From the Cornfield, I want more transparency and more factual information coming from the government.