Unemployment

Unemployment is down by .2% for November which is happy, happy news except for a couple of minor things:

1. The number varies a bit, but on average it takes about 150,000 new jobs a month the break even in this country. Average job creation for the last 6 months has been 141,000. Last month was 118,000.

2. The big reason the unemployment number is going down is because people just quit looking and are therefore not members of the workforce. When the unemployed give up, they're no longer unemployed, hence the drop. When labor force participation drops to about 58%, unemployment will be zero.

3. It seems that in the last 6 months alone, close to 3/4 of the jobs created have been government jobs, which means that they produce no wealth for the economy, just a drain on money that would be more profitably used elsewhere.

So a semi-real unemployment rate somewhere in the 10's has been rendered down to 7.6% and a more real (U6) unemployment rate in the upper teens never gets mentioned.Adjusting the U6 to normal participation rates gives us a number in the low 20's which is comparable to great depression numbers, which were generated without the tricks in current use.

The obvious solution then is to raise taxes on those who create productive jobs and give it to non-productive government drones. It worked for FDR who parlayed a similar situation into a third term.