The one thing that doesn’t deserve much excitement is what will probably garner many of the headlines: the drop in the unemployment rate. It happened only because more people stopped looking for work and were thus ineligible to be counted as officially unemployed. The share of adults with jobs actually fell: to 59.4 percent, from 59.5 percent.
While this blog posting is focusing on the rosy numbers, I'd like to take a moment to explain why these numbers are a complete fallacy. See the BLS decides to not count people that have given up trying to find a job, are working part time jobs to pay bills but are still looking for full time jobs, oh and the most important one: so long as you are continuing to get paid your unemployment benefits you are not counted in the BLS statistics. Guess what? We are rushing to reinstate more unemployment benefits at the cost of the taxpayer.
From AP
With the House planning to break this week for its summer recess and the Senate scheduled to depart at the end of next week, lawmakers took up the legislation with a sense of urgency.
"If we fail to act today, our people, our states and our economy will be harmed," said Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.
Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., said that without congressional action, "4.6 million people nationwide will not receive unemployment benefits in August and September."
The bill provides "such sums as may be necessary" for the federal unemployment insurance fund, a pool of money financed by payroll taxes. House aides estimated the actual transfer of money from the general treasury will be about $7.5 billion.
The fund is providing loans for the state unemployment benefit programs in 18 states that have become insolvent as the recession continues and the jobless rate approaches 10 percent.
Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., said the 18 states already have loan balances exceeding $12 billion and more are expected to request assistance from the federal fund in the coming weeks.
He said about 9 million unemployment insurance recipients are now getting an extra $100 a month as a result of the stimulus package passed in February, and 3 million unemployed workers are receiving extended benefits.
States generally offer 26 weeks in unemployment benefits, averaging around $300 a week. Technically, the legislation does not add to the federal deficit because the states are obligated to repay the money they borrow.
So one again the government manipulates the data and uses taxpayer funds to create the illusion of a better than expected jobs number.
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