You remember Rick Santelli. He is the floor trader whose spontaneous outrage gave birth to the Tea Party. Here is his assessment of the just released 8.3 % unemployment figure, a number that put a smile on the face of Barack Obama. Santelli finds that the favorable looking number resulted from two not so favorable causes, an adjustment in the calculations and more people dropping off the unemployment list because they have given up seeking for work.
The unemployed number is intended to count only those people who want work, so students who have yet to enter the work force and retired folks are excluded. That makes sense. However, people who do want work but have given up and dropped out of the system are also excluded. That is a distortion. Statistically speaking, they are neither employed nor unemployed. They don’t have jobs but are treated as though they do not exist.
There is no official tally of their numbers but various estimates say the published unemployment rate would be somewhere between 12 and 19 percent if these truly unemployed were considered officially unemployed.
Click here for the Santelli video.
RANDOM THOTS 