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Educate yourself. U-6 is the most comprehensive measurement of unemployment / underemployment, and peaked at 18% in 2011 and is currently around 8.5%. Low since 1994 was in 2000 at about 7%, and it typically ranges from 7.5%-10%.

Source with pretty graph: http://portalseven.com/employm...

Unemployment numbers are a bit worse off today than they were when Obama took office, regardless of which measure you look at. So Obama didn't really "fix" anything.

Except that Obama didn't begin his presidency in a vacuum, he had to counteract the employment trend left by the preceding administration. If you look at U3 and U6 (the latter of which includes "marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons"), you can see they have both steadily declined during Obama's presidency.

Unemployment numbers are a bit worse off today than they were when Obama took office, regardless of which measure you look at. So Obama didn't really "fix" anything.

Except that Obama didn't begin his presidency in a vacuum, he had to counteract the employment trend left by the preceding administration. If you look at U3 and U6 (the latter of which includes "marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons"), you can see they have both steadily declined during Obama's presidency.

During Obama's term, 20 million more people have been added to the labor force.

And U6, which includes those who are 'no longer considered' has gone down a lot under Obama as well.

It's not that hard to look up..
http://portalseven.com/employm...

As Trump would say: Wrong. In every sentence.

Also, U6 includes those you think dropped. Guess what? Still lower.

http://portalseven.com/employm...

Trump has already shown how he's going to destroy the economy: Give companies $7M in tax breaks to ship thousands of jobs out of the country. Excellent plan. That will do it.

Exactly.

http://portalseven.com/employm...

http://portalseven.com/employm...

What is U6 unemployment rate ?

The U6 unemployment rate counts not only people without work seeking full-time employment (the more familiar U-3 rate), but also counts "marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons." Note that some of these part-time workers counted as employed by U-3 could be working as little as an hour a week. And the "marginally attached workers" include those who have gotten discouraged and stopped looking, but still want to work. The age considered for this calculation is 16 years and over

"Real" Unemployment rate is whatever you measure, as long as you're consistent. We can call this "real" one U4 (currently around 6%), or the one you seem to like U6 which has dropped significantly since your reference. Both are better when Obama took office, when the nation was shedding jobs like crazy. Both are better overall even though the government has shed jobs since Obama took office (yes the government is smaller under Obama, you don't hear about that much). To get a better unemployment number, the private sector needs to grow to offset the losses in the public sector, and still some more. Obama's not doing a horrible job.

Obama did have a decent hand in lowering unemployment. It's just not enough. Even early on in the recession people told him to spend more, and he knew he couldn't get a real spending bill past Congress (and we're still at historically low interest rates on bonds, money is cheap! Build infrastructure, baby!). But, instead of saying "hey we need more, but this is all those suckers will give us" he was very "this should be enough". He never recovered from that. It truly is his mistake, and it cost him much in both sets of midterms.

There is a narrative that Democrats are lousy on the economy, when the economy tends to do better with Democratic Presidents.

As far as how many he should have added, hmm, that's a good question. Comparing to the 60's - hmmmmmm. We had a postwar dividend, in both pent up consumer demand, and baby boomers becoming new consumption targets. We didn't have globalization then. Japan and Germany were still recovering from the war. China wasn't even on the map economically. No Internet, no offshoring, no robots. It would be an interesting discussion on whether we could *ever* get back to that kind of increase. I have kids, I wish we could. But can they ever win a job from Watson?

"Real" Unemployment rate is whatever you measure, as long as you're consistent. We can call this "real" one U4 (currently around 6%), or the one you seem to like U6 which has dropped significantly since your reference. Both are better when Obama took office, when the nation was shedding jobs like crazy. Both are better overall even though the government has shed jobs since Obama took office (yes the government is smaller under Obama, you don't hear about that much). To get a better unemployment number, the private sector needs to grow to offset the losses in the public sector, and still some more. Obama's not doing a horrible job.

Obama did have a decent hand in lowering unemployment. It's just not enough. Even early on in the recession people told him to spend more, and he knew he couldn't get a real spending bill past Congress (and we're still at historically low interest rates on bonds, money is cheap! Build infrastructure, baby!). But, instead of saying "hey we need more, but this is all those suckers will give us" he was very "this should be enough". He never recovered from that. It truly is his mistake, and it cost him much in both sets of midterms.

There is a narrative that Democrats are lousy on the economy, when the economy tends to do better with Democratic Presidents.

As far as how many he should have added, hmm, that's a good question. Comparing to the 60's - hmmmmmm. We had a postwar dividend, in both pent up consumer demand, and baby boomers becoming new consumption targets. We didn't have globalization then. Japan and Germany were still recovering from the war. China wasn't even on the map economically. No Internet, no offshoring, no robots. It would be an interesting discussion on whether we could *ever* get back to that kind of increase. I have kids, I wish we could. But can they ever win a job from Watson?

This is not exactly supply and demand issue, this is a shrinking economy and inflation issue. The shrinking economy causes people to use less gasoline and inflation causes nominal prices to rise (while real prices are actually falling due to the deflation, so if you measure oil in gold, then you'll see that the prices are falling, not rising).

As the productivity in USA and Europe shrinks, more of the product is distributed to the productive nations, which are able to buy more of that product, but this causes supply irregularities in the countries with less supply.

The situation is similar to what happens in the meat market due to inflation and other factors (like drought). As the supply of feed is reduced due to higher input costs because of inflation and as less supply is produced due to other factors like drought, the farmers start getting rid of their animals, they slaughter more and the prices can fall temporarily. However once that glut of meat is consumed, the overall supply of the animals is reduced and the prices for meat products will jump up.

I believe you are observing the same phenomena right now with oil prices and it's due to higher nominal cost of oil drilling and refining due to inflation as well as lower purchasing power by the population due to the inflation and due to the shrinking economy.

As a side note, the funny jobs numbers that came out (unemployment down to 7.8%) are indeed quite educating to the political situation in USA. 10,000 jobs were added in government and 16,000 jobs were lost in manufacturing sector in September (22,000 manufacturing jobs lost in August). However a 'household survey' shows that 873,000 jobs were created in September, this is the highest number of jobs added in one months since 1983. 66% of these jobs are part time, so the U6 number is unchanged (just under 15%) in September (number of underemployed people as well of those who are unemployed). Don't forget that every revision that comes out the next month revises the job growth numbers down and elections are in November. Don't forget that Obama's white house pressured the military (and other) contractors not to send out pink slips to their employees, who will be fired in 2 months and who must be notified 60 days prior, the white house promised all those contractors to take care of the penalties that they will incur due to this malpractice, this is clearly a violation and manipulation aimed at winning the elections, which is likely highly illegal.

A week ago GDP numbers came out, not that anybody should actually take those numbers at face value, they are absolutely misreported, but even as they are, they were revised down for the second quarter from 1.7 to 1.3%, and this is after using a completely fake deflator of 1.6%. How is it possible that the economy that is "growing" (officially) by 1.6% is adding all these jobs to take the unemployment down to 7.8%? The truth of course is that the economy is shrinking and if the real inflation number is used, then it becomes immediately obvious. Even if the inflation number is only 3%, then the economy is shrinking, because the pre-deflator GDP is 2.9%. The inflation is a few times bigger than that though, so adding jobs in a shrinking economy sound very fishy.

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Think about this: the official deflator for the GDP is 1.6%. Here is a chart of CPI. That's the reported number. The revised GDP is 1.3% Which is down from 1.7% earlier, before the revision. The U6 unemployment number is 15%.

I don't think the U3 is manipulated as much as it just has fewer criteria. U6 includes U3 so it will always be higher. Whether we use U3 or U6 the trend is the same.

I don't think the U3 is manipulated as much as it just has fewer criteria. U6 includes U3 so it will always be higher. Whether we use U3 or U6 the trend is the same.

So Romney, who has attacked Obama for having "no private sector experience" taps a career politician to be his VP. One with less executive experience than Sarah Palin, and one who has advocated for what Newt Gingrich called "right-wing social engineering".

Nice one, Mittens.

Yeah, Mitt could have picked some guy who spent 1/2 a term in a state legislature, then quit halfway through his first Senate term, then bumbled his way to a $2 trillion dollar a year deficit, the highest by-far U6 unemployment rate since the Great Depression AND who can only flail about always blaming somebody else.

But you probable thin Obumbles is a shining success, don't you?

Despite the loss of literally millions of jobs and the lowest EMPLOYMENT rate in the US in over 80 years (and note well that the U6 unemployment rate didn't spike up to 16% until after Obumbles was in office.

With US unemployment at a six month high [...]

The US unemployment in March, April, and May was 8.2, 8.1, and 8.2% respectively. Although that is certainly way too high, is is by far not the highest in the last six months. In fact, it's the lowest since January 2009.

Because those are the cooked U3 numbers that just forget about workers if they've been unemployed long enough. The more realistic - and honest - U6 unemployment rate has never dropped below 14% since Obama took office.

The other fact usually left out of the storyline: anything less than 200,000 new jobs a month is an increase in the unemployment rate - because we need that many new jobs just to keep up with population increases.

Wow, way to absolutely miss the point of my reply to brunes69. According to the site you linked to, the U6 unemployment rate in January 2009 was 14.2%. From February 2009 to Frebruary 2012 it was never bellow 14.9% (in fact it was never bellow 15.1% except in February 2012). In March, April, and May 2012 it was 14.5%, 14.5%, 14.8%.

Therefore, what I said still holds true even if you use the U6 unemployment rate. What did I say? Oh yes:

Although that is certainly way too high, is is by far not the highest in the last six months. In fact, it's the lowest since January 2009.

With US unemployment at a six month high [...]

The US unemployment in March, April, and May was 8.2, 8.1, and 8.2% respectively. Although that is certainly way too high, is is by far not the highest in the last six months. In fact, it's the lowest since January 2009.

Because those are the cooked U3 numbers that just forget about workers if they've been unemployed long enough. The more realistic - and honest - U6 unemployment rate has never dropped below 14% since Obama took office.

The other fact usually left out of the storyline: anything less than 200,000 new jobs a month is an increase in the unemployment rate - because we need that many new jobs just to keep up with population increases.

Wow, way to absolutely miss the point of my reply to brunes69. According to the site you linked to, the U6 unemployment rate in January 2009 was 14.2%. From February 2009 to Frebruary 2012 it was never bellow 14.9% (in fact it was never bellow 15.1% except in February 2012). In March, April, and May 2012 it was 14.5%, 14.5%, 14.8%.

Therefore, what I said still holds true even if you use the U6 unemployment rate. What did I say? Oh yes:

Although that is certainly way too high, is is by far not the highest in the last six months. In fact, it's the lowest since January 2009.

The US unemployment in March, April, and May was 8.2, 8.1, and 8.2% respectively. Although that is certainly way too high, is is by far not the highest in the last six months. In fact, it's the lowest since January 2009.

Because those are the cooked U3 numbers that just forget about workers if they've been unemployed long enough. The more realistic - and honest - U6 unemployment rate has never dropped below 14% since Obama took office.

The other fact usually left out of the storyline: anything less than 200,000 new jobs a month is an increase in the unemployment rate - because we need that many new jobs just to keep up with population increases.

Those numbers are all calculated. They simply aren't reported as often. And they are all calculated on the same document. The number you are mentioning is the U5 unemployment rate which includes unemployed and looking, and unemployed and not looking, it's 9.6%: http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u5.jsp. The U6 rate includes U5 plus those who are under employed, i.e. taking part-time, or low wage work, it's 14.5%: http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp

Those numbers are all calculated. They simply aren't reported as often. And they are all calculated on the same document. The number you are mentioning is the U5 unemployment rate which includes unemployed and looking, and unemployed and not looking, it's 9.6%: http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u5.jsp. The U6 rate includes U5 plus those who are under employed, i.e. taking part-time, or low wage work, it's 14.5%: http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp

Data

H1-B holders aren't what I was talking about, but the numerous students from overseas who take spaces from the locals who under the new rules, have no options or any other school to apply to. They are the elites from their countries as they can afford the inflated $15-$20K a year for out of state tuition. They could just as easily pay for private schools at that rate but they clog up the state schools by the thousands.

In fact, it's so messed up that I can hardly begin to explain it. Residents of the state have to now go to ONE school in each system now based uppon where they live. Anyone from another state or another country can apply to any and all of them and under the current rules, they are seen as "diversifying" the population and so are usually given preference. I live here, I pay taxes here. I have less options that some rich asshat from halfway across the planet.

They say that there is no more space. Well, how about throwing out some of the opportunistic leeches from overseas and give the residents a fair chance to gain the skills that they say that we all need to compete with these other countries?

And while we're at it, slam the damn door on every last H1-B visa holder. Our unemployment is actually 18% if you add in the full statistics, btw. The news plays along, which is odd - you'd figure that at least Fox News, which has a hard-on for sticking it to those in power right now would be yelling this to the masses.

http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp
Welcome to the real problem. U6 is the old standard and is what virtually identical to what we used during the Great Depression. With numbers that high, we need to look after ourselves first. Now, I'm not saying that we should close our borders or anything. But this insanity of making it *easy* to give away jobs and education to foreign workers at the expense of normal citizens who desperately need those spaces has to stop.

It's over 20% in California and several other states.