Unemployment numbers came out last Friday and they paint a very concerning situation. The unemployment rate is 9.8% and the economy lost another 263,000 jobs. That is 22 months in a row of job losses. I looked back at historical data that I have that goes back to 1939 and cannot find a string of job losses this bad. You would have to go back to the Great Depression. Fortunately, unemployment is not as bad thus far. Here is what it looked like in the 30’s.

Now take a look at the latest from Shadowstats. It shows a comparison between what the Government reports, the Department of Labor (which is higher and more accurate), and then their data which includes everyone effected by unemployment. As you can see, Shadowstats is close to 22% unemployed. That is a far cry from what the Government is reporting.

Now we also always like to see how many jobs the Government “estimated.” Every month, the Government estimates jobs created or lost that they feel that the Department of Labor misses. Yes, this is purely a bogus number. This last month it was actually on the low side. They added 34,000 jobs into the total. In 9 months, they have created 1,063,000 jobs out of thin air. Now do you know why you can’t trust Government reporting?

In 2008, they created 904,000 jobs out of thin air.

In 2007, they created 883,000 jobs out of thin air.

Dating back to early 2000, I cannot find a year where they have been so aggressive. The problem is that we continue to lose 250,000 jobs a month with no job creation in sight. We aren’t even stopping the bleeding much less creating jobs. They have let this problem get way out of control and now the problem is going to be tough to eliminate. Let’s all hope that the graphs don’t end up looking like the one in the 1930’s.

Tags: Bob Brooks, Department of Labor, economy, Government, Great Depression, Unemployment