August 2, 2012

The U6 President and His Zombie Armada

Next week the July unemployment rate will be released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There is likely to be a very significant seasonal adjustment - enough of one that there might even be a modest improvement in the U3 unemployment rate - the commonly reported rate.  Expect the administration to trot out the "right direction" meme and claim things are still picking up.  Expect too, a compliant ultra-liberal press to carry the president's water once again, on that argument.  Expect the message to go out to the president's zombie armada, that everything is great, and expect the zombie armada to eat it up.  But this president is not the employment president, he's the U6 president, and U6 is downright bad.

U6 represents the real unemployment picture.  The BLS definition is as follows;
[the] total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers.
In other words - unemployed, underemployed and those who've given up.  Marginally attached means the following (HT Capital Ideas);
Marginally attached workers are persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not looking currently for a job. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule.
And what has U6 looked like over the past 18 years?  Like this:

The U6 numbers under Obama are still unnaturally high. That's not Bush.

Not only is that on Obama, where the decline in U6 has started, is under the GOP takeover of Congress.


Now I know you came here looking for zombies, and I won't disappoint - the presidential apologists are legion, and his followers truly are a zombie armada.  Not exactly what you may have been expecting, but look up the definition of a zombie.  Never mind, I'll do it for you.

zom·bie   [zom-bee]

noun 1.
(in voodoo)

a. the body of a dead person given the semblance of life, but mute and will-less, by a supernatural force, usually for some evil purpose.

Sounds like that's pretty accurate for Democrat supporters.

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