RUSH: I don’t want to be an I told you so, but I told you so, and I told you so five weeks ago. Gallup, every week, puts out their own unemployment numbers and Gallup has been signaling that this day unemployment below 9% was coming. They’ve been blatantly saying so, based on their own unemployment data, which is not related to the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. It’s their own surveys; and in the last five weeks, occasionally they will say that their numbers that they come out with on a Wednesday or Thursday indicate that we’re getting very close to a Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment number of under 9%. I said, “The regime needs this, and when we finally get to under 9%, it will be eight-point-something, but the point-what won’t matter. The only number that’s going to matter is the eight.
“It could be 8.9; it won’t be 8.9, it will be ‘8.’” Well, it’s 8.6, but it doesn’t matter, it’s eight; and predictably, the media’s all over it, and that’s the headline. You know, I got up this morning and I did the show prep routine and one of the first places I always go is Drudge and I saw it right there in red, and it’s 8.6, and that’s all it said, and I knew what it was. It’s Friday, and I didn’t need to know anything else. I knew that was the unemployment number, 8.6, and that’s all anybody else is gonna hear. They’re not gonna dig deep and find out how it happened. Some people have, some people are. There’s a slight bit of reservation in certain sectors of the Drive-By Media. But most of the Drive-By Media is doing hosannas and hallelujah and merry…
Well, Happy Holidays. They don’t do Merry Christmas in the media. But we’re back, it’s done, they got the headline: “Unemployment, 8.6%!” Now, the truth of the matter is — and Bloomberg News even points out that the only way — it’s a corrupt number. It is a corrupt number. Folks, the number of people who have quit looking for work in the last few weeks is 315,000. Those are the people have thrown up their hands after 99 weeks or more of being unemployed; and they’ve said, “I’m quitting. I’m not looking.” So they’re not counted. Therefore, the universe of jobs available in the country is down by 315,000. That is the labor force participation rate. The labor force participation rate is a meager 64%. It fell to 64% from 64.2%. So the 0.2% drop equals 315,000 people leaving the workforce.
That means there are 315,000 fewer jobs to have, so the universe of jobs has been steadily shrinking. What was the number of jobs created? It’s 120,000 jobs. It’s 120, 126,000, whatever. That’s in the ballpark. That number of jobs created can lower unemployment rate 0.4%, almost one half of a percent? Creating 120,000 new jobs can do that? That alone tells us how small the labor force participation rate is. That tells us how small the universe of available jobs in the country is, when creating 120,000 — and we still have, don’t forget, over 400,000 applications for unemployment compensation reported yesterday. So just 120,000 new jobs can lower the unemployment rate almost a half a point. That’s not possible without that 315,000 figure, the 315,000 people who have just walked away.
Bloomberg News is even reporting this means that more people left the workforce than got jobs. Now, stop and think of this. More people left the workforce than got jobs, and the unemployment rate goes down? We’re dealing here with a serious form of corruption, manipulation of data; but, we all knew it was coming. After all, we’re talking about the regime. We knew this was coming. We know the fact, we know the histoire, that no president’s been reelected with an unemployment rate higher than 8%. So here we are 11 months away from the next election, voila! Heading into the Christmas, slash, holiday season, and we’re at 8.6%, the 0.6 doesn’t matter, we’re at 8%. And the media is having orgasms out there, O-gasms.
But everybody in the country knows the economy is not growing, that new jobs are not being created a massive, robust way that signals, or feels like economic growth. But the sad thing is that all these details that I have provided — probably, sadly — won’t even matter because the regime has gotten the headline that it wanted. It got 8.6. The regime got unemployment 8.6%. That’s what they wanted; that’s what they got. All these other details are irrelevant. Now, this is the U3 unemployment rate. The U6 unemployment rate counts the 315,000. The U3 is a government marker. U3 is what is reported. The U6 unemployment number counts the 315,000 who have given up looking for a gig. The U6 unemployment number is around 16, 17% — and that’s real unemployment.
The job universe from January 2009 when Obama was immaculated to the present is down about 2.5 million jobs. There are 2.5 million fewer jobs in our country in the two and a half, almost three years now that Obama has been in orifice — and that’s the dirty little secret. You shrink the workforce by two, 2.5 million people is the only way you can report the unemployment rate going down. More people leave the workforce than found jobs, and the unemployment rate went down a half a point. So again we are being massaged, we are being spun, we are being inundated with corrupt numbers, but it was all predictable, all understandable. Again, so small has the employment universe become — so small, so many people having dropped out of the system altogether…
No longer counted, is what that means, as being unemployed. No longer counted as being alive in terms of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. When you quit looking for a job, you’re only counted in that U6 number, which is not the one that’s reported. The U3 number is. So you drop out of the system altogether, you’re no longer counted by the Obama regime. A mere 126,000 job increase drops unemployment rate almost one half of a percentage point. This is nothing more than the government manipulating the real work situation that exists in the country. It’s all calculated to create a false impression of economic recovery and a healthier job market. It’s truly outrageous — and watch how the Obama media cronies regurgitate this propaganda for the most part. Watch how they’ll all fall in line. You’ve probably heard it already this morning. I have examples of it here in the sound bite roster, but I don’t… Ah, I’ll probably play a couple of them just for the fun of it.
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RUSH: Let me give you another way of illustrating what the regime did to get to this unemployment number, and it is very similar to how baseline budgeting works. Another way of looking at this is this. You had 120,000 jobs that were created. You have 315,000 people who dropped out. What you do is add those together and you get a number 435,000, and that 435,000 the government today says are no longer unemployed. So 435,000 jobs created… No. No, no. Let’s not go that far. So, 435,000 people no longer unemployed results in an unemployment rate dropping from 9.0 to 8.6. See how that works? This is what they do. This is what they did.
This is how it happens: 120,000 people find work, 315,000 quit looking; those 315,000 are no longer called unemployed. That’s the U3 clarification, qualification. U3 is made up of people looking for work and people who have lost their jobs and so forth. The 315,000 stop looking. They are added to those who are unemployed, and you get a grand total of 435,000. That’s how it happens. It’s almost a dead returning for the fraud and the misleading way that budgeting is done, baseline budgeting, such as there are never any cuts. Even with the super committee, there aren’t gonna be any cuts in spending. There are just going to be reductions in what was projected to be spent.
They’re still gonna spend more, just not as much as was projected in the current services baseline. That’s what it’s actually called: Current services, meaning what is at present being spent is the baseline. Not zero, but what’s presently being spent or at present. And then if you add 10% to what is being spent as a projection, it’s what we’re gonna spend next year and you only spend 7% of it, “Oh, no, that’s a 3% cut in that department! That’s a Draconian cut of 3%. We were gonna spend 10%, and you’re only gonna spend 7%!” It’s a 3% cut. That’s how baseline budgeting works. It’s the same thing here with the unemployment number.
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RUSH: Here’s Mary in Chicago as we go back to the phones. Great to have you with us. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thank you for taking my call. It’s an honor and a pleasure to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I had a question for you regarding that 8.6% unemployment rate that was reported. I was wondering if you know whether there are other government programs that people are taking advantage of and switching over. There aren’t too many people like your first caller who is obviously very honorable and doesn’t want to accept disability payments. There’s a lot of people who want to take advantage of the system and perhaps two years of unemployment is not enough, so they figure, “Hey, let me get on a better plan, maybe I can get on Social Security disability in addition to some food stamps and some other programs and take advantage of the government that way.” Do you have any information on what the statistics are on those other plans?
RUSH: Well, in relation of one program to the next, no. But I can tell you that the number of people on food stamps is at an all-time high, and we’ve gone up. Just in the years that Obama’s been president we’ve increased it by 5%, I think it’s from 20 to 25% or 40 to 42. It’s 44.5 million people, and more than one program these people are availing themselves of — and by design. It’s the Democrat Party buying votes via dependency.