Shock employment figures: Fewer than 46% of Americans have jobs

[lildreamer316]

By David Edwards
Thursday, April 14th, 2011 -- 1:44 pm

The percentage of Americans who have jobs has fallen to the lowest point in three decades and now hovers just above 45 percent of the total population, according to an analysis of labor data published by USA Today.

The report, based on figures provided by the Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showed that at 36.7 percent, Mississippi had the lowest percentage of population working.

Employment rates were also low in California and Arizona, where just over 37 percent had jobs. At 55.8 percent, North Dakota had the highest rate of employed residents.

MORE at link: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/14/shock-employment-figures-fewer-than-half-of-americans-have-jobs/


..so explain to my dumb blonde self how this does not equate to 54% unemployment? :eyes:

[3waygeek]

1. Remember that the total population

includes kids & retirees, who aren't counted as unemployed since they're not in the workforce. Although if the Teabaggers have their way, they'll have to get jobs, too.

[TomClash]

2. It's everyone

Children, retirees, housewives and stay-at-home dads, some mentally and physically impaired people, and my best friends - the idle rich.

You raise an interesting way to count the unemployed. If you subtract the above, how many unemployed or underemployed would remain? I'll bet it would be more than the" Bureau of Lying Statistic's" would count.

[MacNfries]

6. That data sounds as skewed as the "the top 2% of income pays 30% of all the taxes" ... LOL!

Keep it simple here ... you have a small country, population of 3, with a flat tax of 10% ...

The poor man, making $30,000 a year pays $ 3,000 in taxes
The middle class man, making $80,000 pays $ 8,000 in taxes
The rich man, earning $1 million pays in $100,000 in taxes

The rich man is not going to call attention to the fact that he earns 90% of all income, instead, he bellows, whines, cries and fusses because he is paying 90% of all the taxes while both his 2 colleagues pay less than 10%.

Then he writes and inserts a tax code with X number of exclusions, exemptions, etc etc ... and suddenly you have the rich man paying less taxes than the middle class man, and still whining that he's being picked on because he's more successful than his other 2 colleagues. As the budget gets out of whack, deficits arise, the rich man's suggestion is that if you give HIM more money, he can create higher paying jobs for his 2 colleagues ... yup, right!

Let's go back and look at that employment figure again .. . LOL!

[Demeter]

3. Employment Peaked at 95% of the eligible population in 2007

Total Labor Force (CIVILIAN LABOR FORCE —Persons aged 16 and over who are working or looking for work) in 2007:

153.1 million persons of which 70,988,000 were women and 82,136,000 were men.

LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION RATE—the percent of persons in the labor force as compared with the number of persons in the population:

EMPLOYMENT and UNEMPLOYMENT—67,792,000 women were employed as compared with 78,254,000 men; 3,196,000 women were unemployed compared with 3,882,000 unemployed men.

* 2007, total U.S. employment grew to 146.0 million persons

http://www.dol.gov/wb/factsheets/Qf-ESWM07.htm


BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!


US Economy Will Return To December 2007 Employment Levels... In 2021!

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/us-economy-will-return-december-2007-employment-levels-2021

...a new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research concludes that digging ourselves out of the current unemployment hole, which is 7.5 million less people having jobs than did in December 2007, will take at least 4 years, and not occur prior to March 2014. However, this assumes a flat working-age population, something the Fed would love to be the case. Alas, the country is growing: and if one incorporates the effects of labor force growth into the above analysis, as the CEPR authors have done using CBO projections, then we may have a much larger problem on our hands: the study concludes that taking into account the approximately 14 million new job seekers in the future, then the December 2007 unemployment rate will not be met until April 2021! Welcome to the new normal. Of course, both of these analyses assume that the economy will immediately commence growing and generating jobs at the recovery rate seen in the 2000s, when about 166,000 jobs per month were being added. With every month that this does not happen the 2021 date will continue being pushed out further into the future...


WHAT THIS STATISTIC OF 46% POPULATION EMPLOYMENT IS USED FOR BITCHING ABOUT IS HOW FEW PEOPLE ARE PAYING INCOME TAX, MOST LIKELY....

[GeorgeGist]

4. More jobs would mean more wealth.

But the wealthy are too cheap to see it.

[bluerum]

5. Children, retired people, the disabled, students and others make up the population.

We simply do not expect these segments of the population to be employed.

Child and slave labor is a thing of the past - at least it principle.

[bhikkhu]

7. Not especially useful or "shocking"

unless one expects children, the elderly, and the disabled to all have jobs and pay their own way. Perhaps in the future, if some people get their way...

[Citizen Worker]

8. Thirty years of tax cuts for the wealthiest has not trickled down and created more jobs. Another

great hoax perpetrated on the working class.