The Latest Jobs Report, Un-Spun

The kitchen magicians of the Obama regime were very pleased with how their latest batch of cooked employment numbers turned out. They were able to show a HUGE drop in the fake unemployment rate (all the way from 9.4% to 9.0%), accompanied by a jobs increase of a WHOPPING 36,000 for January.

For those who prefer reality to myth and propaganda, here are a few snapshots from the real world via The Economic Collapse blog.

The following are 10 statistics that reveal that the latest unemployment numbers from the government are no reason to cheer....

#1 According to CNBC, economists were expecting the U.S. economy to add 145,000 jobs during January. Obviously the 36,000 figure was a huge disappointment.

#2 Approximately 150,000 jobs need to be added to the economy each month just to keep up with population growth.

#3 The government jobs report also indicated that 504,000 Americans "dropped out of the labor force" in January. That may make the unemployment numbers look better, but the truth is that the vast majority of those 500,000 Americans still need incomes and still need jobs.

#4 According to the latest numbers from Gallup, the unemployment rate actually increased to 9.8% at the end of January.

#5 Gallup's measure of "underemployment" (those that are unemployed plus those that are working part-time but want full-time employment) was sitting at 18.9% at the end of January.

#6 As I reported yesterday, there are approximately 28 million Americans that would like full-time jobs but that don't have full-time jobs.

#7 According to Zero Hedge, the number of Americans that are "not in the labor force" but that would like a job right now has hit an all-time record high. If you add all of those people into the official unemployment figure it would jump to 12.8%.

#8 According to Calculated Risk, this is the deepest and most brutal employment downturn that the United States has experienced since World War II. The current employment downturn started 37 months ago and there doesn't seem to be any indication that we will return to pre-recession levels any time soon.

#9 The U.S. Labor Department has also announced that job growth during 2010 was much weaker than they had previously reported. The numbers for 8 months were revised down, and the numbers for 4 months were revised up. After all of the revisions are accounted for, it turns out that a total of 215,000 fewer jobs were created during 2010 than originally calculated.

#10 According to one brand new survey, 4 out of every 10 Americans are struggling "a lot" to pay the bills right now.

Read the entire article here.

Do Not Look At These Charts Near Bed-Time

A tip o' the hat to Derek Thompson, staff editor at TheAtlantic.com.

The median duration of unemployment is higher today than any time in the last 50 years. That's an understatement. It is more than twice as high today than any time in the last 50 years.

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Via TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com, via Cryptogon:

As you can see from the chart below, the total of all debt (government, business and consumer) is now somewhere in the neighborhood of 360 percent of GDP. Never before has the United States faced a debt bubble of this magnitude....

Most of us were not alive during the Great Depression, but those who were remember how incredibly painful it was for America to deleverage and bring the economic system back into some type of balance.

So if our current debt bubble is far worse, what kind of economic horror is ahead for us?

Read that full story HERE.