What a Waste of Energy

LEANING RIGHT-I recently executed a Google search on the number of unemployed in the United States – 92,000,000. 

I got 148,000 hits. One reference was Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn) who in an opinion article to The Tennessean in 2014 said: 

The more than 91 million Americans who are out of the workforce and stuck on the sidelines deserve action on the part of the president and the Senate.” 

A confused reader wrote The Fact Checker about this sentence, wondering how it was possible that 91 million Americans could be unemployed. 

Black’s assertion came in an opinion article that decried the decline in the worker participation rate. As we have noted, this previously obscure data point has seeped into GOP talking points as the more closely watched unemployment rate showed steady improvement in 2013. The official rate is now 6.7 percent, or about 10.3 million unemployed. 

“In fact, if the same percentage of people were in the labor force as there were in 2009, our unemployment rate would be an astronomical 10.8 percent,” Black wrote. “This is in stark contrast to the administration’s prediction that his 2009 ‘stimulus’ legislation would have lowered unemployment to just 5 percent today.” 

The 14-page report thus was not an official government assessment, or even an analysis of an actual plan that had passed Congress, as Black claims. Instead, it was an attempt to assess the impact of a possible $775 billion stimulus package and how much of a difference it would make compared to doing nothing. The administration certainly embraced the paper in later testimony, yet we have never found any citation of the unemployment projection by any administration official. 

Okay, but what about this idea that there are “91 million Americans who are out of the workforce and stuck on the sidelines”? 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics does show that there are nearly 92 million Americans out of the workforce. But dig into the numbers and it is clear that it’s silly to say all of these people are “on the sidelines” and need action from the president and the Congress. 

This BLS document shows that the civilian noninstitutional population—essentially, people over the age of 16–is nearly 247 million. The civil labor force is 155 million, with a participation rate of 62.8 percent. So that leaves nearly 92 million “not in the labor force.” 

What does that mean? 

Essentially, it means everyone above the age of 16 who is not working. The BLS breaks it down even further, and it quickly becomes clear that the majority of these people are retired or simply are not interested in working, such as stay-at-home parents. 

•6 million want a job now but cannot find one. 

•2.4 million did not actively search for work. 

•1.5 million did not search for work because they are students or left the job market for family reasons, illness or some other factor. 

•900,000 are discouraged and think no job is available. 

Add that up, along with the 10.3 million who are unemployed, and then maybe you could say there are 21 million people who are “on the sidelines” of the job market. But the other 70 million people have permanently left the work force. 

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The 92,000 other hits from the internet present the same data in one form or another as as Black’s report. The fact is that this data is even available for examination is very alarming and discouraging. .

We are a very healthy country full of a great deal of vitality. We have abundant natural resources and lead the world in human resources. 

We should be searching high and low to find qualified workers rather than worrying about how these unemploument numbers are computed or how work status is defined. 

All our energies are misguided.

 

(Kay Martin is an author and a CityWatch contributor. His new book, Along for the Ride, is now available. He can be reached at  [email protected].)

-cw

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 16

Pub: Feb 24, 2015