http://www.henrythornton.com/article.asp?article_id=4182  

Unemployment rates are severely under tracked. Around 20% to 25% of people are unemployed in most western world countries. Figures have been fudged by politicians for political gain. 

“The language of government: Restructure the base from which the statistics are derived without drawing public attention to the fact’. Translation: Fiddle the figures.”

Nothing has ever been done to reverse the trend. A crack team of experts are brought in to fudge the figures. What are your guys thoughts on the issue?

I've never felt the unemployment figures I read about are correct. Now with how bad things are (at least in so cal, usa) I know the numbers have to be fudged, and its sad the the media outlets report them as facts. But then again the media in america is just sad anyways in my opinion.

Same as GDP, inflation, crime, education, health, and just about any statistic reported by Government agencies.

Which is why I believe we should have an independent, internationally funded institution dedicated to reporting statistics across the globe - perhaps a function of the UN - so that we can get figures that we can believe, without any political twists.

Unemployment rate just shows the % of people who do not have a job and are looking for a job.  Does not count the people who are not looking.

Should show:
the % of people that have a job
the % of people who are retired
the % of people who are under the age of majority

100% - the above 3 things = the true unemployment number

Yeah, a lot of posters on these forums (and throughout the internet) have been saying this for years. While there are several conspiracy theories why most governments choose such misleading methodologies to calculate statistics, the simplest and most reasonable explanation is that individuals would be less willing to support the government’s meddling in the economy if they knew how little benefit there was from it and how much damage they were doing.

That article is entirely unreadable. I wanted to see how they arrived at that figure but all I got was a headache.

bull, its Libertarian scum that are causing the problems by refusing to let the government do more to tackle the issues, if the self righteous vermin were kept well away from politics things would have gone much better.

Great, let S&P and Moodys do the job, they already make a very fine job with all the banks and countries.

Self righteous vermin can be thought of in two ways, you know.

Yeah because the things governments have done to date have been such a huge success, so obviously if they were allowed to do more of it we would be even more successful!