US Unemployment rate hits 9.8 %

rng: The only real hiring that's taking place is within government, health care, and education. And these figures are paltry (Thank God! LOL!). The increasing lag in employment statistics are a continuation of a trend throughout recent recessions. And that trend is that unemployment is much more prolonged throughout these recent recessions. It's not a stretch, in my opinion, to say that U.S. unemployment will continue to climb on the charts for another year. That's bad enough. But what's really bad--and what the average person is not aware of--is that those who continue to be unemployed are dropped from the official government unemployment statistics after about 60 days or so. In other words, the unemployment numbers continue to rise in absolute terms and at the same time, the average person is being led to believe that the unemployment rate is decreasing whenever the loss of jobs is not as high in the current month as opposed to the previous month.

This is what the average person hears from the mainstream media in regard to an improving economy:

'The economy is showing signs of improvement! This month's unemployment rate is down from last month's by (such and such an amount)'.i.e., 250 thousand lost their jobs last month and only 249 thousand lost their jobs this month.  And at the same time, millions have been dropped from the government's unemployment statistical count. My favorite is when the newscasters tell us that the housing market is improving because home sales have increased such and such a percentage from this time last year. What that simply  translates into is that professional real estate speculators are buying up vacated homes for pennies on the dollar at foreclosure auctions. But the cruelest economic deception, on the part of the American government, is this: The government is not telling the American people that, once they lose their jobs, the majority of them will never re-gain entry into the industry that paid them so handsomely for years, and that their only choice is to retire early or flip hamburgers and the like for minimum wage . . . .

a211423: Most voters believe that W. Bush was responsible for the current recession. They get it! One of the problems is that people simply have no idea how the economy works (or doesn't work). The result is that politicians make hay of this fact and use it to their political advantage. This usually occurs in the form of a president proclaiming that his policies ended a recession (or a depression in the case of FDR) or a presidential candidate proclaiming that if he is elected, his policies will end a recession. Politicians have virtually nothing to do with ending recessions. And in most cases, their policies prolong recessions and make things worse for the average person. I have no doubt that  fiscal and monetary policies can have a positive effect on an economy and I have no doubt that fiscal and monetary policies can actually prevent recessions (or depressions). But for some reason,  our economic institutions, such as the Federal Reserve which was set up almost 100 years ago to prevent severe down turns in the economy such as we're now experiencing, seem to always do the wrong thing. Indeed, the facts are that since the Federal Reserve was established, America has experienced more macro economic instability, and increasingly prolonged recessions and unemployment than before its establishment. I wonder why that is . . . .

a211423:  I have no pet peeves when it comes to matters of economics. I make a sincere an earnest effort to ascertain the facts and to therefore be completely and totally objective. Moreover, I think that it's an extremely dangerous thing for anyone to place their faith and trust in any government institution. And I think that it's even more dangerous for anyone to place their faith and trust in any politician or political party.  I simply stand by the historical and economic fact that the Federal Reserve has had more failures than successes.  I urge everyone that's interested in why the American economy does what it does to read as many books on the history of the American economy as they can. The Federal Reserve was never set up to "protect the credit rights of consumers". It was set up as a consequence and under the pretext of one particular "bank panic" a few years prior and as an "emergency banking institution. It was set up as a monetary institution entrusted with "tweaking" the nation's money supply in order to smooth out business cycles (i.e. recessions) and to prevent economic devastation such as occurred in the Great Depression less than two decades subsequent to its establishment. There is very little  convincing evidence that the Federal Reserve has done any of this. The closest that the Fed has come to being perceived as carrying out its stated function was back in the Carter years when inflation was in the double-digits. Again: The facts are that prior to the establishment of the Federal Reserve, the longevity and severity of America's economic downturns were less than what America has experienced subsequent to the establishment of the Federal Reserve.

And another New Yorker has popped up on the site! Imagine that!

White Trash with disposable income have  destroyed America's economic system . . .

YES! I believe it with all my heart!

a211423: JEEZ! I'm not a libertarian! Ask nanute! LOL! The only thing that I'm a libertarian on is the first and second amendments to the U.S. Constitution. If the Federal Reserve Bank proved to be effective and did what it was supposed to do, I probably wouldn't have a problem with it.My point about the Fed is that there's very little evidence to suggest that it's an effective institution. If it were, then why have there been so many recessions? Look at the functions that the Fed serves in my above comment to nanute. It's not as if the Fed was hamstrung in implementing its monetary policies. The Federal Reserve Bank is more than  semi autonomous and  can pretty much do what it wants to do in affecting monetary policy.