Unemployment

Imagine you live in Springfield, home of the Isotopes, and you see that one of the businesses there has hung out a sign. Now hiring, need 5 people.

Imagine that there is a line of some 200 people waiting to apply.

Mayor Quimby is passing by, and a reporter asks him if this doesn't indicate that Springfield doesn't have an unemployment problem, what with 200 people chasing 5 jobs? Quimby agrees, and says he has a stimulating solution to the problem. He has the police come over with mean dogs and chases away half the applicants, then proudly states to the reporter that by stimulating movement in the crowd, he has cut the unemployment rate in half.

The reporter, of course reports this as unvarnished gospel.

Today, the government reported that unemployment was down to 8.9%.

Zero Hedge, however, reports that the non-working portion of the population is continuing to grow at a faster rate than the general population.
The smaller the workforce, the better the reduced number of available jobs looks.

Gateway has Gallups tracking of the unemployment rate here:
These numbers consistently look worse than the ones the administration puts out.

According to Ace, The unemployment rate is approaching what the administration threatened us with if congress failed to pass the porkulus bill.
I added some of the Gallup numbers in green. Doesn't look real promising does it?

And while government spending isn't the only thing weighing down any recovery, it certainly isn't helping. The Republicans, however, seem to be solidifying their reputation for being able to get along with the Dems by not really opposing them, and the Dems scream that they're being put to cruel and unusual death at the hands of psychotic budget slashers.

The screaming from the left covers the fact that the proposed cuts are really little more than fiddling with rounding errors on the part of the Repubs, and at the end of the day, little will actually change.

Tea, anyone?

Update: No sooner do I publish, then the WSJ comes out with a piece suggesting that if the government wasn't jiggering the numbers, the real U3 rate would be more like 11.3%, suggesting that those Gallup numbers are on the low side.