You're Being Lied To - Again

(WND) - The real U.S. unemployment rate may be 22.1 percent for February 2011, not the 8.9 percent reported by the government, according to economist John Williams, author of the "Shadow Government Statistics" website, who has argued for years that the federal government manipulates the reporting of economic data for political purposes.

The government announced today the unemployment rate was reported to have fallen 0.1 percent to 8.9 percent in February 2011, although that is the "seasonally adjusted number."

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics Table A15, the "not seasonally adjusted" unemployment number for February 2011 was 9.5 percent...

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THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: I had nothing better to do today so I spent the greater part of the morning watching the financial channels on cable. I also pulled down some more information from the Internet, and of course my suspicions were confirmed. We, the American people, are being LIED to yet again. (No surprise there eh?) It would seem the U.S. government is trying to talk its way out of recession again, by giving us artificial unemployment numbers. Of course the stock market reacted immediately with a 200 point jump on the Dow Jones. However that was short lived with a 150 point drop today. All over the financial channels the cover story is: "recovery, Recovery, RECOVERY!" but when you listen carefully there is a subtle admission in all of the prognosticators' optimism, and that is fear that this "recovery" may be immediately stunted by rising oil prices and austerity measures among broke state governments that will likely result in massive layoffs of state employees.

All the while, the real unemployment numbers remain hidden to those simply surfing the financial channels, but for those with nothing better to do today (like yours truly), sitting through the long stories reveals another subtle admission that real unemployment is actually a lot higher than what the government is reporting.

Here's the deal. The government has been fudging the unemployment numbers ever since this recession started. They do this by not counting those unemployed individuals who are discouraged and no longer looking for work. So to put it bluntly, once you go onto the welfare list the government takes you off the unemployment list. (Nice little trick eh?) So the actual unemployment rate is significantly higher than the reported unemployment rate. Okay, so what is the actual unemployment rate? At the moment, it's right around 22%.  That doesn't sound like an economic recovery to me.