Unemployment Drops .. ??

Oh boy!  DW World News reports US Stock Market is up with the announcement that unemployment in the USA has dropped to 4.9% ...

Great?  Not exactly.  How do you think the Feds get those figures?  Well, they get them from the states.  And how do the states get those figures?  They get them from whatever they call their unemployment office.

And how does the unemployment office determine a drop in unemployment?

The only way they can count is by counting the number of persons collecting unemployment payments, plus the number of people not collecting but still using their "job placement assistance."  Sound like pretty accurate figures used to measure unemployment, right?

Not exactly.
 -- Many people who are unemployed cannot qualify to collect benefits.
 -- Those who do collect benefits can do so for only a limited period of time; at some point their benefits end, regardless of whether or not they have found work.
 -- Job hunting assistance at most state unemployment offices are a pure joke, not suitable for 75-80% of the unemployed.
 -- Those who sign up for job hunting help often give up on what 's available, even though they still need work.

Numbers don't lie ... but the people who put the numbers together can lie, and do lie, if solely by omission.

There is another reason why "unemployment" figures don't reflect the true economy:  They do not reflect the under-employed, nor those who fall outside the box by daring to be homeless.  [Please read the latter statement with cynical tone of voice.]

Perhaps the best way to judge the economic health of the peoples of this nation would be to use different bench marks.  How about the number of families that have to go to a free food bank to have two meals a day?  Maybe the people who go to free clothing store, or get their clothes from the trash of others?  Does anyone bother to count the people living in parks, under bridge abutments, beneath freeway interchanges?  And another figure that is totally disregarded are those who are disabled and struggling to survive on a meager disability payment from one source or another?  Should not all of them be counted?

Finally, when someone says that over one hundred thousand new jobs were created last month, why don't they bother to say that most of the jobs are seasonal and the workers hired will soon return to the ranks of the uncounted unemployed?

A survey I took recently asked me whether all the news programs out there were too much, or if I liked having the data available.  I answered I wanted information.  They didn't have a box to tick which said I realized that I still had to look behind the news for the facts.