On Unemployment: Why would some compare dissimilar calculations of economic statistics?

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it,
people will eventually come to believe it.

The lie can be maintained only for such time
as the State can shield the people
from the political, economic and/or military consequences.

Joseph Goebbels

Statistics mask real economic pain

The jobless rate improved this week. It’s now 9.7 percent.

So it sounds as if Henry Paulson…can join Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers in self-congratulation over their roles in preventing a second Great Depression.

They can all cite today’s jobless rate and contrast it favorably to 1933, when it was about 25 percent.

…But the fact is that private-sector employment actually looks worse than during the Great Depression. If you compare the numbers with 1933, more than a third of U.S. workers are jobless today.

…In 1933, 25% of the working population meant 12.8 million people were out of work in a workforce of about 51 million. That included senior citizens, because only about 10% of older people had pensions in those years before Social Security.

Now, the federal government says we have an estimated 14.8 million unemployed, out of a work force of about 154 million. But that number is artificially lower than in the Great Depression because 33 million senior citizens are on Social Security — and not seeking jobs as they were then. An additional 7.4 million adults receive disability payments under Social Security, and some would also have been seeking work in 1933.

But that’s not all. We have a far larger standing military than in 1933 — about 1 percent of the work force, or 1.4 million men and women.

Another 1.6 million people are in jails and prisons, a near-record amount, and again a larger percentage of able-bodied U.S. residents than in 1933. They are excluded from the statistics today.

In other words, 43.4 million people are paid for government employment in the military, or supported through government programs. If added to the jobless numbers, it equals about 58 million people.

…The big difference now is that despair is masked. Social Security and the expansions of unemployment insurance mean that people are able to keep the wolf from the door. The bread lines of the 1930s are food banks.

…Maybe that’s one reason why the American people are so angry at their leaders. They know that many of the government statistics are often just statistical sleight-of-hand.

Kirstin Downey
Politico.com