UNEMPLOYMENT AND GOVERNMENT NUMBERS

It should be no surprise that the government has about 10 ways to Sunday for keeping their books. It doesn't seem to matter what they want to figure out, they have a lot of ways to do it. Some numbers are for Congress, some are for the bean counters, some are even for us.

A good example is Congress saying there is a 1 1/2 trillion dollar deficit, the Congressional bean counters saying there is an 11 trillion dollar deficit, and the Federal Reserve puts the number at 99 trillion dollars. Pretty wide range there.

So when it comes to the unemployment numbers they release every month, it should come as no surprise that they have a variety of ways they count that as well.

I understand they are tying to put a positive face on. And they want everyone to feel good. And they want us to believe the Stimulus Bill is actually doing something useful. Not just feeding earmarks for various congressmen and women.

So here is what I have found out. The government has the U system. And they count unemployment on a scale of U1 through U6. They probably count it a bunch of other ways too, as the web site has pages of numers and charts for every imaginable thing. But since the U system is what they release to the public every month, that is the one we will look at.

U3 is the number they release every month This month that is 9.4%

U6 is the ACTUAL number of unemployed as best as they can figure. That number for this past month is 16.4%

Well that is a big difference, isn't it. I actually think that number is still a bit low.

So when they tell you on TV that things are turning around because less than expected people filed for unemployment, I want you to go back and look at their own chart.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm

If you compare the 16.4% number to the chart above of unemployment during the Great Depression, you will see that we are well on our way to disaster.

I understand the government doesn't want to acknowledge we might be in a global depression. They didn't want to admit we were in a recession.

In fact, they tinkered with the numbers for a full year, denying the recession. Finally in December of 2008 they came out and said hey, we just recheck our numbers, and we've discovered we've been in a recession that started in December of 2007.

Then there is the fact that they can't get the GDP number right either. First they come up with 3.6% GDP shrinking in the first quarter. Opp's, we meant 6.8% shrinkage.

Now it's at over 12% shrinkage for this year.

The point I am trying to make is they lie about everything. And they try to make it look like all that spending is actually doing something. Because they want to get re elected. The smart person will look at these numbers, and see that we are in a lot worse shape then the government wants to admit.

And we haven't seen how many folks in the auto industry will be jobless yet. But I am sure it will be a lot.