Unemployment Number Gets Even Worse

The news is grim: Another 263,000 non-farm workers without jobs, and nation's official unemployment rate at 9.8 percent, the worst since June 1983.

Unless, of course, you view the "real" unemployment rate that includes the long-term laid off workers who have taken bits and pieces of part time work or have given up looking.

That's 17 percent.

That's 1930s, Depression-era, FDR meddling type unemployment.

Just so that we're clear on this.

By the way, they began excluding this category of worker back in 1994 to make the numbers look better. It worked for the Clinton administration, so the Bush team followed suit, and most assuredly the Obama numbers-massagers are probably wondering who else can be tossed out.

It's obvious they haven't a clue as to what creates jobs or encourages productivity in a free society.

Real Unemployment Rate 16.8%

The nation's "official" jobless rate hit 9.7 percent at the end of August.

Inside the numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is another number: total jobless. It includes all those who are out of work and who have been removed from the labor force by government statistical rules. Adding those in you get an even grimmer number, and one that compares quite closely to the numbers of the Great Depression.

That number is 16.8 percent.

Ol' George in east Texas does a pretty good job of number crunching these government reports. He points out if it were not for the creativity of the good people in Washington, D.C., the numbers would look even worse.

No, he's not talking about the Stimulus Projects jobs that Joe Biden hallucinates.

He's talking about the fact that since January 1 the government has "invented" one million new jobs simply by "estimating" them into existence.

This is the 'statistically made up because we think so" department. Hmmm, lemme see here: 15,000 new jobs in construction...sure, whatever... 26,000 in professional services, and 24,000 leisure and hospitality. Uh huh. In all, 673,000 new jobs have been 'estimated into existence' since January and if you back out January, it's more than a million jobs that have been 'estimated into existence' so far this year.

No fair reaching for a swig of Jack Daniels - too early for that. It's only a 26-year high for unemployment.

No one knows for sure if these new jobs exist because there is no paperwork to prove they are there. On the other hand, no one can prove they aren't, so I guess it's your gut logic against their pipe dream.

This paragraph from today's report tells you all you need to know about the phoney-baloney unemployment numbers:

About 2.3 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in August, reflecting an increase of 630,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.

Did you get all that? "Marginally attached" means jobless, but officially not unemployed because they hadn't tried to look for work in the past four weeks.

You gotta keep knocking on doors and telling Uncle Sam about it or he'll just assume you're as happy as a clam, and no one need worry about you.

Bad Headlines & The Price of Gasoline

As usual, the Tulsa newspaper got it wrong.

The headline said "Oklahoma loses 8 drilling rigs over last year"

The truth: Oklahoma lost 8 drilling rigs LAST WEEK!

What has gone down -- way, way down -- in the last year is drilling activity everywhere in the United States. By 50 percent.

According to Baker Hughes.

According to Forbes.

According to CNN.

The wholesale price of oil creeps steadily upward, while the price of natural gas continues to slump, due to overwhelming supply and lackluster demand.

There is an argument to be made that the price of oil has less to do with the supply and demand of gasoline or diesel than it does with the supply and demand of the U.S. dollar. Bernacke's printing presses are running round the clock. You ignore the laws of economics at your peril, so even as the demand remains listless we see the price at the pump slowly climb. This is the dollar's weakening, the intersection of another market.

A tank of gas in January that cost you less than $18 is now costing you more than $36. You're thankful it's not the $55 it cost last summer but you are uneasy that the relentless price rise will get us right back to where we were. If a weak dollar is the reason, you have every right to be woried.

If we once again have $4 gasoline without economic activity, including oil and gas drilling domestically, we will face the worst of both worlds.

Every one of those lost drilling rigs represents 20 to 25 jobs on the crews and service personnel required to make the rigs work. That's 200 people who are friends and neighbors. Nationwide there are 22,500 fewer roughnecks and related personnel with jobs today than one year ago. They won't get the headlines, and the "progressive" who now rule (and I use that term in its traditional sense) won't give them a second thought. We are going to "conserve" our way to energy independence, they proclaim. Higher prices and government mileage mandates are the key; lost jobs in the oil fields, refineries and oil equipment firms are but the price to be paid.

Besides, they'll have no trouble finding top-flight jobs in the food service or housekeeping industries.

Depending upon your fondness for the trucking industry, there is one aspect of today's pump prices that could provide a small ray of sunshine.

A year ago diesel was selling for $1 or more above the pump price of regular unleaded. This, it was said, was because of federal mandates to eliminate sulfur content at the refinery, the added cost placed onto the per gallon diesel cost.

Check the posted prices today. Diesel is selling for less than regular unleaded. The oil companies have slowly adjusted the pricing so that truckers are not bearing the brunt of the economic hit.

That's probably a good thing, and it may be the singular reason that price inflation has not shown up on the grocery shelves. Yet. Individual motorists have much greater latitude in how we use our vehicles, so we making the adjustments, or we will soon.

I do not know if this switch is voluntary, on the part of the oil companies, or if it is being dictated to them from Washington. Either scenario is feasible. I can understand how the oil companies might want to protect the trucking firms from collapse, since they are major customers and, without them, we might experience more economic upheaval than any of us care to contemplate.

But I could also see how the federal government wouldn't mind seeing gasoline rates increase on citizens in order to promote their tough new mileage standards, while at the same time "buying time" for the economy to settle down, or at least delay its collapse long enough to get the rest of Mr. Obama's progressive, socialist agenda enacted.

Anyway, that's how I'm seeing it today.