[fecurtis]

Originally Posted by NickyC

The labor participation rate currently in the US stands at 63.7%, which is the lowest since 1977. In this past December alone, over 450,000 Americans dropped out of the workforce to bring the grand total to nearly 93 MILLION Americans out of the work force. The current U3 percentage of 5.6% is a complete and utter joke. I haven't checked the U6 percentage in awhile, but I believe it's around 11.5% which still isn't even close to an accurate representation considering 93 million Americans of a capable age are out of the workforce. When all is taken into account, a true representation of the unemployment rate in America is around 20%.

It would be, if you want to consider people in school, the disabled, the elderly, people who are the stay at home moms and dads, and people in jail as part of the unemployment rate. It works both ways. Your methodology grossly overstates the actual unemployment rate since you're assuming people want to work or can work when they actually don't/can't. Don't get me wrong the U1-U6 methods aren't perfect, haven't really found an economic metric that is, but they tend to be good indicators for how the economy is doing.

In a real world, with real numbers, the unemployment rate doesn't simply drop because people run out of their 20 weeks of UE benefits, or the fact they can't find a job. Those people still exist and they are still out of work. This is why we have record high numbers of people on disability, as well as nearly 50 million Americans on food stamps. This country is also experiencing depressed wages, with real wages decreasing .2% in December along with a revision downward in November. Absolutely none of this points to the BS number of 5.6% being anywhere close to accurate.

No one is saying it's accurate, well no one who actually understands how the metric is calculated anyway. You use it as an approximation and compare it to last year. Plus, you can still be on government assistance and be employed full time. Hence why your observation on real wages is an accurate one. I'm curious as to see what the minimum wage increases in various parts of the country will have in next month's report, I remain doubtful.

The old saying "it's the economy stupid" could not have been more apt in the November elections. If all was as rosy as the media claimed, why was the ruling party so handedly (historically actually) defeated? It's much like 2008, where everything was so bad the populace would vote for anything with a D next to their name.

I don't recall the media ever calling the economy "rosy", I'd love to see a source from the past 8 years where the economy was being described in an incredibly optimistic manner, it hasn't so the rest of your point is moot and attempts to relate economics to politics.

Most macro economic activity in the US is largely outside of the government's direct control. That said, it does seem they really go out of their way to fuck it up regardless of whether or not they have an R or D after their name, you're being naive if you think otherwise. Most all of them are in it for their own personal benefit, the benefit of some fringe special interest group(s), or at best, the benefit of their constituents (the very set up of Congress incentivizes that above anything else, but more and more politicians don't really do that anymore either as it's not politically and monetary as lucrative these days where it's as easy as ever to take contributions and hide where they came from) and this is usually at the detriment of the rest of the country.

Anywho, this has nothing to do with BMW sales now so sorry for the tangent.