Bob16: They would never lie to us about unemployment.

Except when Raygun magically knocked almost 2 percent off the the unemployment rate when he reclassified military personel as employed.

Or when we magically read the minds of all those people that supposedly aren't looking for a job.

Or when Bush pulled completely fictional unemployment numbers out of his ass with his cooked Birth / Death stat.

The birth/death model applies to employment statistics, not unemployment statistics. The two aren't mathematically related, as much as English majors might want to read the words and think they are.
No one reads anyone's mind; people call up random people and ask them questions. If a I called you up and asked "What's your name?", and you said "Bob16" and I wrote that down, would you accuse me of reading your mind?
Classifying in uniform military personnel as employed would be a neat trick. Unfortunately, I was a little young to care about the labor market when Reagan was President, so I don't remember that happening. And I can't find a reference to it happening. And if it did happen, which President ate the shiatburger when military personnel were reclassified as not being part of the labor force? I'm willing to believe it happened. Can you give me a credible reference?

Franco: Bob16: Want real unemployment numbers.

Take U6 and add about 3 percent.

Then you'll see how lame we are at job creation.

Wait until seasonal employment dies after six weeks.

The U6 is down from 17.4% to 15.6% in the last 2 years. So "U6 + 3%" is also down by 1.8 points. Terrible starting place notwithstanding, that's actually not too bad as far as job creation is concerned.

Oh, and the 9.0% in October vs 8.6% in November are both seasonally adjusted numbers for the U3. The unadjusted number fell from 8.5% to 8.2%. You'd think that if the government was trying to skew the numbers, they'd report the lower unadjusted rate around the holidays.

trey101: Or with the current administration telling us the numbers are going down. The numbers will always go down when you kick people off the rolls of the unemployed. Jan 1st, if they dont extend the unemployment benefits then the numbers will come down even more. Will that mean that the numbers are really down or does it mean that the one counting the numbers is leaving out quite a lot?

Dont think this is only a Republican issue.

Ugh, another one. Ok, here goes. Ooohhhhhh.... the unemployment rate is not based on benefits, but rather on a survey that asks people if they're available for work and how recently they've looked... scalawag.