Jobless rate drops slightly as more Americans stop looking for work Despite spending $787 billion, the economy and unemployment lag

WASHINGTON, DC—The Bureau of Labor and Statistics released June’s unemployment numbers, recording a drop in the jobless rate from 9.7 to 9.5 percent. Good news right? Not so fast. While President Obama and Vice President Biden continue their “Summer of Recovery” fantasy tour, the jobless rate fell because more people have given up looking for work, without those to count into the U-3 index (652,000), the unemployment rate dropped.

Private businesses added 83,000 jobs in June, but the government dropped 225,000 census jobs, bringing the total to 7.9 million jobs lost since the Great Recession began in December of 2007. Though counterintuitive, the unemployment rate drop comes as the BLS reports a net 125,000 jobs were lost in June—again, thanks to those poor U-6 schlubs that have become so discouraged, they’ve stopped looking for work (the U-6 rate stands at 16.5 percent, unchanged from June of 2009).

The president though has a decidedly different take, call it suspension of disbelief, while touting his stimulus as saving the economy in Racine, Wisconsin telling a crowd suffering an unemployment rate of 14 percent, “…every economist who has looked at it has said that the recovery did its job…”

-- Killswitch Politick

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