Gallup: The Big Lie of 5.6% Unemployment

I have been surprised about the positive unemployment numbers coming out of Washington. The

official unemployment rate is now 5.6% and that is not too bad.  I, however, still see a lot of unemployed people. I have not seen that things are getting much better and I don't think most Americans feel things are getting much better. Still, I have tended to accept the official numbers.

I once worked for the Bureau of Labor statistics myself and developed trust in the work of the Department of Labor.  My view has been that professional statisticians do not manipulate numbers for political purposes.  When I worked for the BLS, I had a part-time job as a field rep gathering price information over time. This data, along with the data from lots of other people in other places doing the same thing, was used to compute the Consumer Price Index, which is often considered a measure of inflation. I read the information explaining the methodology of the development of the consumer price index, which at my pay grade I did not have to know but I found interesting. While many people would complain about rising prices, I was actually measuring prices and understood how the CPI was developed. I concluded the individuals complaining of rising prices were wrong and the BLS which produced the CPI was correct.

I have pretty much felt the same way about the measure of unemployment as I did the measure of the CPI. I have heard the conservative critics doubt the rosy unemployment numbers and I have not felt that a lot more people were working than before, and yet I tended to assume the unemployment numbers were correct. After seeing the lawlessness of the Obama administration however, and the way the IRS has been used to go after critics of the administration, I have become more suspicious of official information coming out of Washington. Skepticism has slipping into my acceptance of official statistics.

When ideological opponents of the Obama administration question the unemployment numbers, it is easy to dismiss them and conclude that are nit picking and cherry picking data to avoid giving the administration credit for an improving economy. This week, the renowned and trusted Gallup organization came out with a statement by Jim Clifton, chairman and CEO of Gallup, in which he says the unemployement numbers produced by the government are a "big lie."  The Gallup organization knows a thing or two about statistics.

Gallup's Clifton says, "The official unemployment rate, as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, is extremely misleading."

Below are excepts from the article:

If you, a family member or anyone is unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a job -- if you are so hopelessly out of work that you've stopped looking over the past four weeks -- the Department of Labor doesn't count you as unemployed. That's right. While you are as unemployed as one can possibly be, and tragically may never find work again, you are not counted in the figure we see relentlessly in the news -- currently 5.6%. Right now, as many as 30 million Americans are either out of work or severely underemployed. Trust me, the vast majority of them aren't throwing parties to toast "falling" unemployment.

There's another reason why the official rate is misleading. Say you're an out-of-work engineer or healthcare worker or construction worker or retail manager: If you perform a minimum of one hour of work in a week and are paid at least $20 -- maybe someone pays you to mow their lawn -- you're not officially counted as unemployed in the much-reported 5.6%.  (To read the full article, follow this link.)

One group not counted as unemployed also, is people who are retired.  I have members of my own family who retired early simply because they could not find work.  As a housing counselor, I see people all of the time who are retired but who did not want to retire. After losing a job and exhausting their unemployment benefits, they retired so they could draw social security. If a person looses their job at age 60, it is hard to find a job. After exhausting unemployment, they retire at age 62 when they had no desire at all to retire so early. Since we are experiencing a wave baby boomers entering their early sixties, the number of people in this situation is not insignificant. 

Labor participation rate, persons over the age of 16. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Rather than focusing on the unemployment numbers, a better measure of employment may be that the labor participation rate is down to 62.9%, the lowest in decades. Even that figure however does not count the vast number of people who may have been successful professionals or skilled laborers who are now working for low pay, part-time.

Gallup says only 44% of the American people over the age of 18 have a "good job." Gallup defines a good job as working more than 30 hours a week hours for an organization that provides a regular paycheck.

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One in Six ....

A CEO was seeking to fill a position in his firm's research department. He had narrowed his search to three candidates, a mathematician, an accountant and a statistician. In individual interviews at the conclusion of each interview, he said to the interviewee: “ I have one final question. What is two plus two?”

The mathematician confidently smiled and said, “four.”

When the accountant was asked, he briefly hesitated and said, “four,” paused and said, “usually.”

The statistician glanced both directions, leaned in, lowered his voice and said, “what do you want it to be.”

Below are some interesting statistics with links to the source.

One in three Americans are unaware of Charles Darwin.

One in four Americans read no books last year.

One in four women have survived rape or attempted rape.

One in four children live in poverty.

One in four college students have a sexually transmitted disease.

At least one in five men in developed countries are at risk of abusing or becoming dependent on alcohol during their lifetimes.

One in five young women have experienced forced sexual intercourse.

One in five Americans Has Some Level of Disability.

One in six adults are without health insurance.

One in six Americans claim workplace bias.

One in six men are victims of child sexual abuse.

One in six American children are hungry.

One of every 6 American children is overweight or at risk of becoming overweight.

One in seven women will develop breast cancer.


I used to be much more believing of statistics. Several years ago there was an ad that was played repeatedly on the radio. I don't remember what organization they were promoting, but the ad went something like this: In a quite, low, serious tone, the narrator said, "It could be the person working the in the cubicle next to you, it could be the person your ride the bus with everyday but one out of 6 people are hungry."


Maybe it wasn't one in six, it could have been one in four or one is five or some other number, but it was a low number. Anyway, I didn't pay much attention the first couple of time I heard it, then I started thinking, "who do I know that is hungry?" I could not think of anyone that I thought may be hungry except people on a diet trying to loose weight. Sure, I believe there are hungry people, but not one if five, or whatever the number was.

After that I started paying attention to other statistics. The stats about what decease you will get is often based on unrealistic assumptions, such as you live to age X and you don't die with something else first.


The stats on rape and sexual abuse, I am very sceptical of and think they are politically motivated. A few years ago there was a report that their was a spike in domestic violence on Superbowl Sunday fueled by all of the testosterone of watching football. It turns out that that was not true.


I find it interesting that one is six children are overweight and that one in six are also hungry. I don't know how they came up with those statistics.

I am very unbelieving of statistics like the above. I tend to take them all with a grain of salt. I think people just pull stats out of the air to support their cause or they use such convoluted parameters and definitions that they may as well pull them out of the air or they are based on faulty primary data or poor sampling and methodology.

Is anyone else as sceptical as I?

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