Unemployment figures and reality

According to the government, unemployment in the USA has now finally fallen below 8% for the first time in nearly four years. This was reported with the September employment report at the end of the first week in October. I was out of the country when the report came out, so I did not discuss it at the time, but I believe that it merits attention today. Let's look at a few facts:

1) For a great many years, we were told that the economy had to create 200,000 jobs per month in order to keep up with population growth. Anything less than that would lead to a rise in unemployment.

2) About a year ago, the 200,000 per month figure for new jobs was reduced in much of the press to 150,000 new jobs per month. There was no logical reason for that change, except that the number made the monthly reports look better back then.

3) In the last six months, the American economy has slowed. Growth has been well under the rate of 2% per year. This is not a growth rate that creates new jobs. Indeed, according to the Labor Department, in none of the last five months has the economy created the 150,000 jobs needed just to keep up with population growth. That's right, for the last five months, the paltry number of jobs created indicates that the unemployment rate ought to be rising.

4) Somehow, a miracle occured. Even though new jobs were not being created at anything close to the pace needed to reduce unemployment, the rate reported by the government went down, and it went down by a lot. We have seen a drop of 0.4% over just the last two months.

The only rational conclusion one can draw from these facts is that the figures are being manipulated to help the Obama re-election campaign. This is not a statistical fluke. The truth is that this mess is a national disgrace and no one is paying much attention to it. The federal government is supposed to do the people's business, not spend its time trying to get Obama re-elected.