I just don't get why that's such a big deal. Lots of people don't want or care to have jobs. Why should we penalize the potus for people that have no care for that?

Like, when I was in school, I couldn't have a job because if I did, I wouldn't count as a dependent. That would could me in "the real unemployment rate" as someone who isn't employed, which is a negative, but I didn't want a job.

U6, which measures unemployment and underemployment held steady at 14.6%.

The reality is that the drop was due to about 350,000 people going off unemployment and not to a job. Its a government tactic to make it look more rosy than it actually is. Obama does, it, and so has every president for quite some time.

And I posted now about it, to be consistent.  I have found the government stats to be suspect for awhile.  This site goes into reasons why:

http://www.shadowstats.com/

Only real measure is real jobs created in the private sector and how much they pay.  Also hours of employment is a factor.  The government could suddenly hire people to do nothing constructive, like dig and fill holes for no reason, but that adds nothing to the economy.  That is welfare with busy work to obtain it, and nothing more.

Have you seen my posting history on here?  If so, you won't find it that.  And I decided to reply here, to be able to address that angle.  There are some who make it out to be some sort of Obama plot.  I was calling the measures being broken, and calling attention to it.  Also, I am not doing it based on some personal level now in my life.  I did post before about myself looking at landing work and starting in November, with a 1 year contract.  So, it is about the measures being wrong.

No one who has read your posts would ever accuse you of being a Republican, but the line that "This is all bull in an election year" does seem to indicate that you believe this is some kind of shenanigans, not just a broken system for counting unemployment.

So what you're saying is that the Bureau of Labour Statistics deliberately massages these numbers in an election year to make the president look good? Is corruption in the USA really that deep? If so why bother even going through the sham of having elections?

Is the Bureau, like everything else in the US govt, staffed by political appointees at the senior levels? This would mean in every presidential election year the stats put out by the bureau will favour the president of the day.

Most of these jobs are part time / seasonal though. Macy's alone is reportedly hiring around 80,000 workers for the holidays, so that alone gives the jobs numbers a nice little bump.

Come back in January and see what the unemployment rate is.

While you can argue over which methodology is correct, I think shadowstats is a much more "natural" unemployment statistics; because it includes everyone people would typically consider unemployed.

The interesting difference between the official statistics and shadowstats statistics is that the official statistics have been declining since (roughly) 2010 while the shadowstats alternative has been growing by (essentially) the same amount. The reason for this is that, while the economy has been creating jobs, there have not been enough jobs created to cover population growth (250,000/month IIRC) and people who give up on finding a job are not considered unemployed by the official statistics.

Now that is how you FSU.  I'm glad someone else isn't afraid to work.

My work has added 8 new people last month. We plan to add more. Yes, this is real.
Obama 2012!