‘Official unemployment rate cruelly overlooks suffering of long-term permanently unemployed’
In a scathing attack on what he calls the government’s “extremely misleading” unemployment statistics, Gallup Chairman and CEO Jim Clifton publicly affirmed today what many have known for a long time: The federal government’s economic statistics, including unemployment, are grossly and intentionally misstated for the purpose of making the economy appear better than it is.
“There’s no other way to say this,” Clifton writes on the Gallup website. “The official unemployment rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed, amounts to a Big Lie.”
Decrying all the “celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street about how unemployment is ‘down’ to 5.6 percent,” as well as the “deafening” media cheerleading of the Obama administration, the chairman of one of the biggest and most respected names in polling says the government, media and wall street – all of them – are lying to the American public.
“The media loves a comeback story, the White House wants to score political points and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market,” he says.
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