One Way to Reduce The Unemployment Rate

The administration is crowing about today's reduction in the unemployment rate to 8.3%. Most of you outside Washington probably know that a fraction has both a numerator and a denominator. In the case of calculating the unemployment rate, you divide the number of unemployed by those who are actually seeking work. The unemployment rate can fall if more people find jobs. That would be a good thing. Or it can fall if more people give up and drop out of the workforce. In the latest report 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! The civilian labor force has now dropped to a 30 year low. Apparently the current administration is counting on the fact that much of the country never learned how fractions are calculated. Maybe that's one reason why they're not able to find work?

We don't care. We don't have to.

Sometimes proponents of bigger government express puzzlement as to why the rest of us think that's a really bad idea. Herewith a simple illustration.

In January I experienced a service issue using King County Transit, the Seattle area bus/train operator. I filed a report online explaining the incident and asking a simple question: Why did this happen? Four weeks later I received this response:

 Hello and thank you for contacting King County Metro Transit. A report has been generated in your name regarding the information that you provided to us.  The report will be forwarded to the appropriate Metro Transit department for review.

Again, thank you for contacting King County Metro Transit and have a great day. 

Now, this tell me a couple of things:

1. Responding to a customer is of such little import to them that they couldn't be bothered for four weeks. 

2. My question will now enter another phase of bureaucracy of indeterminate length before being answered. 

If you were running a business with a terrible reputation for efficiency and customer responsiveness, would you reinforce that perception with such a late, lame response? And then would you express puzzlement as to why your customers wouldn't want you to take over even more of their lives?

To paraphrase Lily Tomlin's send-up of ATT in the 1970s:

"We don't care. We don't have to...we're the government."

The Hard Facts on Employment

No matter how jobs the President thinks he's "created", the hard facts are that civilian employment is less than what it was when he took office.



Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics Seasonally Adjusted December Employment