The unemployment rate fell to 6.7 percent in December – the first time it been below 7 percent in five years. — CNN Money 1/10/14
Fact Check: Some will probably take this message to mean that employment opportunities for Americans are really improving. And no doubt some politicians will encourage this notion.
Those who accept this message should consider the rest of the CNN Money headline: “But the Drop was for all the wrong reasons.” The jobless rate did not go down because of a surge of newly created jobs in December. In fact the total was only 74,000—far less than half of the nearly 200,000 job increase predicted by many economists.
What brought the unemployment rate down was not a sign of economic strength, but rather a sign of continued distress. What happened in December was that 347,000 people dropped out of the work force, most of them unemployed people who simply gave up looking for work. But strangely, the government does not officially count them as being unemployed. Not counting them thus made the percentage of unemployed people decline.
Furthermore, the official unemployment figure does not take into account people who can’t find full-time employment even though they have part-time work. They number around eight million.
Meanwhile, the Obama Administration and Republicans who serve cheap labor interests are planning to pass an amnesty/mass immigration bill which will encourage and permit more foreigners to hold and take American jobs.
In the face of their callous indifference to the plight of hard-pressed Americans in the work force, it is encouraging that at least some congressmen are concerned about their fellow citizens. Recently, sixteen Republican House members sent President Obama a letter which made the following statement: “We reject your call for the House to get an immigration bill to your desk that would permanently displace American workers.”
The letter added, “Job number one for congress should be to reduce the unemployment rolls, get families and communities out of poverty and government dependency, rebuild our deteriorating communities and collapsing middle class, and increase wages for American cities. Your immigration proposals do the exact opposite on every count.”
Perhaps more congressmen would care about jobs for Americans if those congressmen had to face the prospect of losing their jobs at the polls.