Former Obama Economic Adviser Prounounces Bullshit

On Barack Hussein Obama's shady unemployment data.

Unfortunately, underreporting unemployment has served the interests of both political parties. Democrats were able to claim unemployment fell in the 1990's to the lowest level in 40 years, happy to ignore the invisible unemployed. Republicans have eagerly embraced the view that the recession of 2001 was the mildest on record.

The situation has grown so dire, though, that we can't even tell whether the job market is recovering. The time has come to correct the official unemployment statistics to account for those left out. The government agencies that can give us a more detailed and accurate picture of the nation's employment situation -- the Census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis -- need additional funds and resources from Congress to do their jobs.

Otherwise, announcements about a rebounding economy will continue to show only half the picture. Take the revised numbers released by the Commerce Department on Tuesday. They showed that output in the third quarter grew at a rate of 8.2 percent, an extraordinary pace, and productivity grew even faster. Almost no one noted, though, that Social Security also announced the latest data on disability applications. Almost 200,000 people applied in October -- up 20 percent from the previous month -- tying the highest level ever. Despite the blistering growth of the economy, the invisible unemployment problem continues.

We didn't have a mild recession and a jobless recovery. We covered up a deep recession and will need a sizable bit of recovery just to get us back to the point the unemployment rate suggested we already were. As the Red Queen said to Alice in ''Through the Looking Glass'': ''Here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!''