The Real Story behind the Unemployment Rate

Michael Snyder

The US unemployment rate has been ‘managed’ to seem as if it’s at a four-year low; we weren’t told that the number of Americans ‘not in the labour force’ rose by 296,000 in February. In fact, the percentage of working-age Americans that have a job is just 0.1% higher than it was three years ago, and isn’t even close to getting back to where it was before the last economic crisis.

A more worthwhile measure of the unemployment rate is the employment-population ratio. It shows that the percentage of Americans with jobs fell from about 63 percent to below 59 percent during the last economic crisis. Since then, it has not gone above 59 percent. The employment-population ratio has been below 59 percent for 42 months in a row.

So there has been no recovery. The percentage of Americans with a job is essentially the same as three years ago. Despite the trillions of dollars the US government has borrowed, and despite reckless currency printing by the Fed, the US employment situation has not turned around.

Meanwhile, the US government and the Fed are desperately trying to prop up the entire global economy. Unfortunately, the global financial system has been built on a foundation of sand and the tide is coming in.

In 2008, derivatives were a main cause of the worst financial panic since the Great Depression. They have returned with a vengeance; banks are creating more derivatives of the riskiest kind than at any time since before the Lehman Brothers crash. At some point, we will have another derivatives crisis even worse than the previous one.

When that happens, financial markets all over the globe will crash, economic activity will grind to a standstill and unemployment will go skyrocketing once again.

“So you can believe the mind-numbing propaganda that the mainstream media is trying to feed you if you want.  Unfortunately, the reality of the matter is that we have not recovered from the last major economic crisis, and another one is rapidly approaching. I hope that you are getting ready.”

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