While the percentage of Americans filing jobless benefit claims isn’t what it was during an unemployment epidemic that ravaged the country throughout the majority of US President Barack Obama’s administration, the Labor Department’s numbers are largely inflated on account of how they determine what actually constitutes looking for work.

Officially, the unemployment rate in America for the month of September was only 7.8 per cent, but that statistic stems from only the number of citizens who have been actively searching for a paycheck. In reality, only around 5 per cent of the adult population in the US is unemployed in the eyes of the government, because they have been handing in applications during the four weeks before the Labor Department conducted their research. Additionally, another 3 per cent are interested in work, but haven’t actively engaged in a job hunting during that span, creating an unemployment figure of just under 8 per cent.

The real figures, however, reveal a much scarier statistic.

“The employment-to-population ratio is the best measure of labor market conditions and it currently shows that there has been almost no improvement whatsoever over the past three years,” Paul Ashworth, chief North American economist for Capital Economics, writes in a note to clients obtained by CNN. That figure, which accounts for the proportion of working Americans compared with the number of adults in the country, is a lot higher than 8 per cent.

Statistical Highlights:

• Based on a goal of creating 20 million new jobs by 2020 (in the ‘90s the US produced 21.7 million jobs), the US should have produced 8.25 million jobs by October 2012.  We have only produced 4.18 million, which represents a 49% shortfall.
• Since the beginning of this decade, the private sector produced 4,659,000 jobs of which 95% were created by small business.  However, the government sector lost 478,000 jobs.   97% of government job losses occurred at state (17%) and local (80%) levels.  Most of the layoffs at the local level have critical jobs including teachers, police and firefighters.
• Since the beginning of this decade, 83.8% of all new jobs were produced by four industries in the service providing sector (Professional and business services; Education and health services; Trade, transportation, utilities; Leisure and hospitality).  Manufacturing contributed 9.7%.

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