Fuzzy Math on Unemployment - April 2010

The BLS is reporting a slight increase in unemployment for April, bringing it up to 9.9%. This includes an increase in employment in the federal government, which is more people being supported by the taxpayer. The federal government tally also includes 66,000 for temporary census workers.

Here is the official BLS report for April 2010.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

So while they have reported the "official" total of unemployed to be 15.3 million, they excluded an additional 11.6 million people as follows:
- 9.2 million working part time (resulting from hours being cut or those unable to find a full-time job)
- 2.4 million marginally attached to the labor force (not counted as unemployed discouraged workers, not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them)

This puts the actual unemployment at 26.9 million or 22%. This is an increase from last month by .5 million people. Shadowstats provides a chart of the real unemployment, including those the government has omitted.
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts



An increase in overall unemployment by .5 million is even worse when you consider what it might be without the federal government expanding at the taxpayer's expense. While there may be less people unemployed because there are more employed by the government, this does not account for the hidden cost to the economy.

Those in the private sector produce a product or service which can generate wealth. Those in the government sector not only produce nothing, they drain taxpayers of funds that could be utilized to hire employees, invest capital, and to generate wealth.

For all of these additional government employees that taxpayers are supporting, we should be able to claim them as dependents. Actually, when I think about it, I'd like to tell the leeches to go out and get a real job as a productive member of society.