Are the new unemployment numbers a good sign? Or just election-year shenanigans?

When you look at the labor participation rate, it just reflects the fact that more people have given up on ever getting a job again.

good, could be better

more people are working now, than this time last year..... things are looking up. If BLS statistics have been used for years, in the past, ..... we will accept BLS statistics..... even in an election year.

The Obama Administration is entitled to its own opinion, but not its own facts. Technically, if one looks singularly at BLS’ establishment survey of the private sector, 3.1 million jobs were created by businesses in the past 22 months.

But that does not reveal the whole story.

Obama is creating the false impression that the unemployment situation is improving when we’re stuck in the water.

We have an effective unemployment rate of 11 percent, and an underemployed rate of 17 percent. There are over 27 million working age adults who still cannot find full-time work, no thanks to Obama’s trillion dollar “stimulus” policies. To lie about the horrific state of our economy and the plight of 27 million Americans who cannot find work can be best described as a crime against humanity.

According to BLS, since Feb. 2010, when this 44th President starts measuring his claim that 3 million jobs were created (as he did at the 2012 SOTU Address and before the Super Bowl yesterday), the amount of people employed has only increased from 138.66 million to 140.79 million, a net increase of only 2.13 million. While that sounds nice, that is a pace of just 96,000 a month, which does not even keep up with the growth of the population — which grew at a pace of 163,000 a month — let alone replace the 8 million jobs that were lost in the recession.

Best case answer in light of the overall Employment facts from the BLS to the question posed here at Current TV? - Election-year shenanigans!

Seriously, this months numbers and the revised numbers from previous months is definitely a good sign. Like it or not, the economy is growing and getting better.

As long as our elected officials remain locked in a perpetual campaign cycle everything they do will be shenanigans.

Perhaps a different way of calculating the "new" jobs, would be to look at those workers that have dropped out of the job market. The rise in employed could be from filling vacancies just available.

Since they are using the data the same way they have for 30 years, it is a good sign. Does it capture all of the unemployed or under-employed no. But they never have. So whether you believe that the employment numbers show the full story, it still shows that more jobs are opening up, particularly in manufacturing, and the economy is starting to recover.

Election year shenanigans.

I suppose basically they're on the side of good, but it's well known and understood they're not exactly -real- or complete. It's a basically flawed system of documenting/recording. Like so many things that're old, established they haven't kept up at all with the time. What constitutes "full time" is a joke basically. It doesn't take into account those who are massively "under-employed". It doesn't take into account too many real factors... There are other similar backward numbers that are given a credence they don't deserve like the precious stock market, a increasingly large part of the population has nothing in the stock market anymore, the stock markets continuing happy days mean nothing to us. Yet you hear reported on the big "nightly news" by all the major news organizations the precious stock numbers. Just another sign of the complete disconnect between the increasingly smaller percentage, less then 1% and the rest of us.

numbers are a good sign but only tell us who is filing and leaves out people who have given up or work part time. the real question is -- how long will it take for republicans in Congress to sabotage the recovery?

unemployment numbers are unrealistic. The documentation process has limitations making the number flawed. I was undocumented for 2 years and I knew 5 other sole proprietor contractors who were unemployed for a long time. Then the young are lost in the shuffle. When I was 17, out on my own, there was little I could do to show up on any roles. Imagine the homeless? Are we counting them as unemployed too? Think about it, do the shelters report the unemployed, do the forms for welfare count as unemployment? No, it's if you lost your job and register for unemployment, then you count. Imagine how many millions have not done that?