CHESSNOID

When the Obama team put the $787 billion stimulus package into play, they had forecast unemployment would top out at 8% by the end of this year. Many economists and experts agreed and they were all wrong.  This is no different when our Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke predicted there would be no recession.  Also wrong.  Why am I skeptical with all these government economists and experts?  It is simply they have a record of being wrong and they always use limited data to make their assumptions.

Even the 9.7% is not accurate because the government had changed it to reflect a lower number.  The true unemployment rate is much higher.   For some reason they don’t count laid off workers who took a part time job or people who just have given up looking.  They did count these people in the Great Depression numbers.

AP News:

If laid-off workers who have settled for part-time work or given up seeking jobs are included, the so-called underemployment rate hit 16.8 percent last month. That’s the highest such rate on records dating to 1994.

Some argue it is even higher when you factor in all the tweaks the government does with these numbers.

MSN Money:

By adding these folks back in, William’s SGS-Alternate Unemployment Measure rose to a jaw-dropping 20.6%. Separately, the Center for Labor Market Studies in Boston puts U.S. unemployment at 18.2%. Any way you cut the numbers, the situation is very bad. According to David Rosenberg, one-in-three among the unemployed have been looking for a job for more than six months and still can’t find one.

If we are really in the realm of 18-20% range of true unemployment, then that would mean we have about 30 million unemployed people. The numbers could possibly be higher from people who were self employed and just closed their business. They are not counted as laid off people or entitled to unemployment benefits.

I think it is ridiculous that Pres Obama, VP Biden or anyone else in the Obama administration, Bernanke, Romer or any other government official start patting themselves on the back and taking credit for ending the recession and getting the economy rolling.  The economy continues to get worse in their state of denial and their deficit spending ways. That is like Bush declaring victory on the wars we supposedly won, but are still fighting 6 years later.