The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment

If you ever want to take at official statistics from the government, the Bureau of Labor Statistics‘ U-6 would be a good start — but even then, their calculation ‘methods’ have now magically changed a few years ago to mask the real situation.

 

Right now, we’re hearing much celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street about how unemployment is “down” to 5.6%. The cheerleading for this number is deafening. The media loves a comeback story, the White House wants to score political points and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market.

None of them will tell you this: 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.

Whistle-blower fired from Hanford nuclear site

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Whistle-blower Donna Busche, who raised safety concerns at the nation’s most polluted nuclear weapons production site, was fired Tuesday from her job at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

Busche’s complaints are part of a string of whistle-blower and other claims related to the design and safety of an unfinished waste treatment plant at Hanford.

Busche, 50, said she was called into the office Tuesday morning and told she was being fired for cause.

“I turned in my key and turned in my badge and left the building,” Busche told the Associated Press in a telephone interview from Richland.