# Can we necessarily believe Bush's new jobs claim? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 3, 2004, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082 "2004-04-03T18:26:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/41 "2004-04-05T03:17:17Z")
> [@iamme99](#): > > It wasn’t my contention that the numbers are being massaged by the Bush administration. I believe the BLS numbers have been awry for a long time. They didn’t give an accurate picture of employment in the past (due to the reasons I have previously cited) nor do they do so now. I pretty much agree with your overall assessment. Measuring something like the unemployment rate is a \*\*very \*\* difficult thing to do. I tend to look at gov’t numbers for all these sort of things as telling us what the trend is relative to the past. They may not be accurate in an absolute sense, but if the same basic methodology is used, then one can at least compare year to year or quarter to quarter data. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/42 "2004-04-05T05:20:25Z")
**flickster:** _The reason this is a preposterous concept is that unemployment figures are comprised of people that are available for work and that are attempting to find work. Being incarcerated makes it difficult to do either._ Um, but that’s kind of my point. The argument is that the incarceration in large numbers of potential workers, most of whom (at least two-thirds, according to the [estimates](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/economy/july-dec03/unemployment_07-29.html) I’ve seen) were unemployed before they went to jail, **artificially depresses** the US unemployment rate. Especially when it’s compared to that of European countries that don’t send anywhere near as many of their unemployed citizens to jail for nonviolent offenses. _However, if one was going to include the incarcerated in unemployment rates, you would first have to deduct the number of inmates actually performing jobs while incarcerated._ No, the BLS statistics, as far as I can make out, are [based](http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm) on statistical sampling of households, and don’t include people in prisons or other institutions. Such people are officially designated as neither employed nor unemployed—i.e., not in the labor force—whether they’re doing jobs in prison or not, AFAICT. So my point stands: i.e., the US unemployment rate is lower than that of many other industrialized countries partly because we reclassify many more of our unemployed as “not in the labor force” by sticking them in prison for minor offenses that the other countries generally don’t incarcerate for. I don’t see why you would consider this a “preposterous” concept. (Btw, apologies to all for the hijack, but it looks as though the originally suggested debate—i.e., are the BLS statistics on March job growth trustworthy?—has been pretty conclusively answered in the affirmative.) ---
**Author:** ![Planet\_of\_the\_Shapes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b77776/32.png) [@Planet\_of\_the\_Shapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Planet_of_the_Shapes)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/43 "2004-04-05T12:47:28Z")
> [@Brutus](#): > > Not that I claimed that unemployement didn’t blip up a bit, but you will notice that our rate is significantly lower than [Europe’s.](http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/5/62/29589476.pdf) You will also notice, no doubt, that the Democratic nominee wants to introduce various Euro-style [protectionist policies](http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=694&u=/ap/20040403/ap_on_el_pr/bush_kerry_economy_1&printer=1). If you care about jobs, you won’t be voting for Kerry, that is for damned sure. From that story you cited: " Kerry has a different prescription for economic growth. He touted his plan to create 10 million jobs, in part by eliminating tax incentives he says encourages companies to send work overseas and using that revenue to lower overall corporate taxes by 5 percent to promote job creation." Does eliminating existing tax incentives and lowering corporate taxes constitute protectionist policies? ---
**Author:** ![flickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7bcc69/32.png) [@flickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flickster)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/44 "2004-04-05T13:27:31Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > No, the BLS statistics, as far as I can make out, are [based](http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm) on statistical sampling of households, and don’t include people in prisons or other institutions. Such people are officially designated as neither employed nor unemployed—i.e., not in the labor force—whether they’re doing jobs in prison or not, AFAICT. > > So my point stands: i.e., the US unemployment rate is lower than that of many other industrialized countries partly because we reclassify many more of our unemployed as “not in the labor force” by sticking them in prison for minor offenses that the other countries generally don’t incarcerate for. I don’t see why you would consider this a “preposterous” concept. They are not considered part of the labor force because they are not available for work (so your point does not stand). It could be argued that if the inmates were not performing some jobs that then it would have to be done by a non-inmate, which would then be counted. But you are making it sound like we incarcerate people just so they won’t be included workforce numbers. While we may incarcerate for your stated “minor offenses” that may or may not happen in your “country to be named later”, does that also take into consideration the countries where they may not incarcerate but take off a body part instead? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/45 "2004-04-05T13:43:41Z")
**flickster:** _But you are making it sound like we incarcerate people just so they won’t be included [in the] workforce numbers._ :eek: Sorry sorry sorry, I certainly didn’t mean to give that impression. I may not be a big fan of our take-all-prisoners War on Drugs policy, but I don’t believe that its purpose is merely a statistical trick to make our unemployment rate look low! All I meant was that **Brutus** ’s comparison of US and European (no body-part-removing justice systems included in this comparison, btw) **unemployment** rates is somewhat distorted by the great difference in our **incarceration** rates. I.e., if we had European-style penalty policies for non-violent offenses, US incarceration rates would be lower and unemployment rates higher, bringing our numbers closer to the European average. Now, I’m not necessarily **advocating** such a change, or if I were, this thread would not be the place to do it; nor am I suggesting that in that case **some** European countries (esp. Italy and Spain) wouldn’t still have higher unemployment rates than the US. I’m just saying that the difference would be significantly smaller than it now appears. In summary: I just don’t want us kidding ourselves that our apparently greater success in reducing unemployment is entirely due to superior economic efficiency, if some of it is in fact due merely to a more draconian criminal justice system. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/46 "2004-04-05T14:21:22Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > All I meant was that **Brutus** ’s comparison of US and European (no body-part-removing justice systems included in this comparison, btw) **unemployment** rates is somewhat distorted by the great difference in our **incarceration** rates. I.e., if we had European-style penalty policies for non-violent offenses, US incarceration rates would be lower and unemployment rates higher, bringing our numbers closer to the European average. It’s unclear to me that this is necessarily true. You’d have to demonstrate that prisoners are bigger consumers than non-prisoners are. Or that they at least consume at the same rate. If non-prisoners consume at a higher rate, that will create demand for goods/services and therefore a higher demand for jobs. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/47 "2004-04-05T14:41:57Z")
> [@](#): > > (Note also that the US unemployment rate is artificially lowered by our very high incarceration rate, especially for nonviolent crimes such as drug offenses. We’ve got nearly 3% of our entire adult population in jail, and since most inmates fall in the working-age category and have fairly poor employment prospects, it’s likely that a large number of them would be unemployed if they weren’t doing time. The combined incarceration plus unemployment rate for the US is probably much closer to the European average than the unemployment rate alone.) Actually, the article you linked to says that there were 1.3 million people in prison in 2001. That is less than 1 percent of the U.S. adult population. Even if we assume a large proportion of them would have been counted as unemplyed if not in prison, then we are still talking about a few tenths of a percentage point in the unemployment rate. America’s high rate of incarceration does not significantly effect the unemployment rate. ---
**Author:** ![Desmostylus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/48 "2004-04-05T14:57:46Z")
> [@zimaane](#): > > Actually, the article you linked to says that there were 1.3 million people in prison in 2001. Seems the number is growing pretty rapidly: > [@](#): > > [US prison population peaks > Monday, 7 April, 2003](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/2925973.stm) > > Jails now hold nearly twice as many inmates as in 1990 > The number of people in jail in the United States rose to more than two million for the first time ever last year, the government has said. Doubled in 12 years (1990-2002), and went from 1.3M in 2001 to 2M in 2002. ---
**Author:** ![iamme99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/57b2e6/32.png) [@iamme99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamme99)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/49 "2004-04-06T03:55:54Z")
I sent the following question to the BLS and got the reply below. I think this information clears up some questions. The link provided in the reply below is also interesting reading. _ **In your statistic collection, how do you account for someone who is working two or three separate part-time jobs? For example, let’s say that someone was officially unemployed but actively looking for work and takes a job working 15 hours per week as a bank teller and a second job working as a cab driver 20 hours per week. Would you consider this as TWO new jobs having been created? If not, how would you differentiate this one person working two part-time jobs from one person working one full-time job?** _ > [@](#): > > I am replying to a message that was forwarded to the program office within the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) that handles requests relating to the Current Population Survey (CPS). The CPS is a monthly survey of approximately 60,000 households and is a primary source of U.S labor force data. > > To answer your question, I’ll explain how BLS measures employment. Employment data are published every month in the Employment Situation Summary news release and come from two surveys. One survey is conducted among U.S. households and measures the number of people with jobs. This is the household hold survey, or the CPS. In the CPS, employment is defined as: > > Persons 16 years and over in the civilian noninstitutional population who, during the reference week, (a) did any work at all (at least 1 hour) as paid employees, worked in their own business, profession, or on their own farm, or worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers in an enterprise operated by a member of the family, and (b) all those who were not working but who had jobs or businesses from which they were temporarily absent because of vacation, illness, bad weather, childcare problems, maternity or paternity leave, labor-management dispute, job training, or other family or personal reasons, whether or not they were paid for the time off or were seeking other jobs. Each employed person is counted only once, even if he or she holds more than one job. Excluded are persons whose only activity consisted of work around their own house (painting, repairing, or own home housework) or volunteer work for religious, charitable, and other organizations. > > Respondents in the CPS are directly asked whether workers in the household have more than one job. Thus allowing multiple job holders to be counted. > > The other survey, the Current Employment Statistics (CES) Survey is conducted among firms in the U.S. and is also known as the payroll or establishment survey. Employment in the CES is measured by the number of individuals on a company’s payroll. > > An important difference between the surveys is that the household survey provides a count of employed persons; whereas, the CES, the establishment survey, provides a count of JOBS. This difference refers to how multiple jobholders are treated by each survey. The establishment survey counts jobs because, for example, if one person worked two jobs, that person would be counted twice in the establishment survey because he or she would appear on both establishments’ payroll records. However, in the household survey > (CPS) the person would be counted as one employed person because he or she did some work during the reference week. > > Therefore, the unemployed person who finds a job with two employers, as you noted in your message, would be counted differently in each survey. In this case, the person would be counted twice in the CES for each job in the bank and the taxi. Yet, the individual would count as one employed person in the CPS regardless of the number of hours worked. > > The following web site provides further information regarding the two surveys and their differences. [http://www.bls.gov/cps/ces\_cps\_trends.pdf](http://www.bls.gov/cps/ces_cps_trends.pdf) > > On the topic of the number of jobs created during any time period, neither survey counts the number of jobs gained or lost each month. Rather, both measures give the overall level of employment. What is commonly referred as “job creation” is actually the net change in employment level over a given time period. > > I hope this information is helpful and if you have other questions feel free to contact me. > > Regards, > > Emy Sok, Economist > Division of Labor Force Statistics > Bureau of Labor Statistics > Tel. (202) 691-6382 ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/50 "2004-04-06T08:29:01Z")
Analysis of this on [www.prudentbear.com](http://www.prudentbear.com). [link](http://www.prudentbear.com/archive_comm_article.asp?category=Guest+Commentary&content_idx=31571) No, never trust anything Bush says. ---
**Author:** ![Desmostylus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/51 "2004-04-06T09:51:38Z")
> [@iamme99](#): > > I sent the following question to the BLS… Well done, **iamme99**. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Doc\_Nickel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5fc32e/32.png) [@Doc\_Nickel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doc_Nickel)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 10:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/52 "2004-04-06T10:06:26Z")
> [@Planet of the Shapes](#): > > From that story you cited: > > " Kerry has a different prescription for economic growth. He touted his plan to create 10 million jobs, in part by eliminating tax incentives he says encourages companies to send work overseas and using that revenue to lower overall corporate taxes by 5 percent to promote job creation." > > Does eliminating existing tax incentives and lowering corporate taxes constitute protectionist policies? -I don’t know from 'protectionist policies", but I do tend to wonder how Kerry plans to give ten million jobs to about eight million unemployed. Unless I’m mistaken, that equates to less than zero unemployment, which seems mathematically unlikely. ---
**Author:** ![iamme99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/57b2e6/32.png) [@iamme99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamme99)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/53 "2004-04-06T10:26:48Z")
> [@Doc Nickel](#): > > -I don’t know from 'protectionist policies", but I do tend to wonder how Kerry plans to give ten million jobs to about eight million unemployed. Unless I’m mistaken, that equates to less than zero unemployment, which seems mathematically unlikely. You are forgetting that the population of workers is increasing. We will probably need 12 million jobs by then to get to zero unemployment. ---
**Author:** ![iamme99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/57b2e6/32.png) [@iamme99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamme99)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/54 "2004-04-06T10:32:50Z")
Found this on another message board. I Googled for a direct link but couldn’t locate anything. > [@](#): > > From The King Report > M. Ramsey King Securities, Inc. > Monday April 5, 2004 - Issue 2890 “Independent View of the News” > > …We have never seen such a grossly misinterpreted Employment Report in our 30 years in this biz. But the nature of the wise-guy-dominated markets is to shoot first and analysis later. So if you don’t want to know the truth or if in the words of Jack Nicholson “You can’t handle the truth” ignore the following. > > About release of the report, we immediately noticed some huge red flags. How could non-farm payrolls explode 308k when a) the unemployment rate increased to 5.7%; b) wage growth was less than expected at 0.1%; c) the “employed population ratio” actually FELL to 62.1% from 62.2%; d) the “employment participation rate” was unchanged at 65.9%; e) total employment was unchanged at 138.3m and most importantly f) the avg workweek fell 0.1 to 33.7, which is near a 40-year low (33.5)! (See table A-1.) > > When dissecting the numbers we learned that NSA service job wages fell 8 cents and they accounted for 230k of the 308k job growth. Leisure & hospitality wages NSA fell 4 cents; and NSA avg hours worked fell 0.3. Something is obviously wrong. Healthcare contributed 36k jobs, leisure & hospitality 28k, retail 47k, government created 31k and the phantom jobs estimated to be created by small business was 153k! This is now known as the business birth/death rate. Apparently a large number of workers entered the workforce in order to force the unemployed rate higher, but still something seemed incredibly wrong. > > After the close, our good friend and astute, no nonsense economist, ex-Fed official and investment adviser (at Van Hoisington Management), Lacy Hunt, provided the answers to the conundrum. Of the 308k jobs created, 296k are temporary or part-time jobs! Let us repeat and let’s be very clear, almost all jobs created in what is heralded as a great employment report are part-time jobs. “In March, the number of persons who worked part time for economic reasons increased to 4.7 million, about the same level as in January. These individuals indicated that they would like to work full time but were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find full-time jobs. (See table A-5.)” People want full-time but can’t find it. Lacy opines that Congress did not renew unemployment benefits so many people took whatever they could get. This accounts for the surge in people entering the workforce. [http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t05.htm](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t05.htm) Lacy noticed other salient points in the report. The average weekly paycheck in February for the private sector was $524.58; in March it fell an astounding 88 cents to $523.70. The area of job growth shows even worse numbers. The average weekly paycheck for leisure & hospitality workers is $225.55. Retail is $364.50. Now everything fits and conforms, especially to the large fundamental trend of persistent lowering of US living standards as those in Asia increase. This is great news for Bush and the US!?! And this is reason for TV broken-clock jackasses to hoot and holler?!? But there is more. > > “The index of aggregate weekly hours of production or nonsupervisory workers on private nonfarm payrolls fell by 0.1 percent in March to 99.0 (2002=100). The manufacturing index was down by 0.3 percent over the month to 94.1. (See table B-5.)” > > In the Employment report there is this illumination in Table A-7: “NOTE: Detail shown in this table will not necessarily add to totals because of the independent seasonal adjustment of the various series. Beginning in January 2004, data reflect revised population controls used in the household survey.” So we checked to see why the caveat. “More unemployed” increased 182k; but in the table, men age 20+ saw unemployment increase 182k. Women age 20+ had a 142k increase in unemployment. That totals 346k more unemployed by real math, but not BLS math. [http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t07.htm](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t07.htm) > > The Employment Report is 180 degrees from what is being propagated. As we have regularly stated, especially during Slick’s term: 1) due to the proliferation of ‘fast money’, operators and investors react to headline data and news without thought or analysis and 2) commentators, pundits, gurus etc. tend to rationalize market moves rather than analyze the data or events. PS - The hedge fund industry is headed for a major reorganization and philosophical change. Too many knee-jerk lemmings try to quickly make small percentage moves under huge leverage. And we don’t want to get into the ‘fund of fund’ gatekeepers that are populated by many with no trading, investing or business experience. > > Now let’s see who in the industry does the requisite analysis of the employment report and has the nerve to say the emperor has no clothes. But you now know the facts and reality. The market will realize this in due time, and it won’t be a pleasant adjustment. Wells Fargo (Minneapolis) economist Sung Won Sohn is the only other economist that we saw mention that part-time jobs were most of the jobs gain. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/55 "2004-04-06T13:55:00Z")
> [@Desmostylus](#): > > Seems the number is growing pretty rapidly: … Doubled in 12 years (1990-2002), and went from 1.3M in 2001 to 2M in 2002. Actually, it didn’t go from 1.3M to 2M in just one year! If you read those articles carefully, the 1.319M number at the end of 2001 (and 1.355M in mid-year 2002 in the other article) refer to inmates in state and federal prisons, and thus these two articles seem to be consistent in that regard. The 2M in the article you linked to refer to the total in all prisons/jails, which includes an additional 665,000 in local and municipal jails. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/56 "2004-04-06T14:04:03Z")
Using that number of 2 Million in prisons or jails and the BLS employment numbers, one can get the following numbers for what the unemployment rate would be if those folks were not in prison and had various unemployment rates as a group. Namely, the unemployment rate would be 7.1%, 6.4%, and 6.0% under the assumption that that group had 100%, 50%, and 25% unemployment, respectively. (As opposed to the actual rate of 5.7%.) So, my guess is that, under reasonable assumptions (say, 25% or so percent unemployment for that group, although we could argue about that), the large number of incarcerated people in the U.S. is having a measurable, but likely fairly small (on the order of a few tenths of a percent) influence on the unemployment rate. ---
**Author:** ![flickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7bcc69/32.png) [@flickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flickster)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/57 "2004-04-06T14:09:28Z")
If you are bound and determined to include inmates that are unavailable for work, then you should also include all of the military personnel to the other side of the equasion. It will increase the total number in the workforce plus reduce the unemployment rate bacause they are all working. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/58 "2004-04-06T14:43:41Z")
Military positions are counted as jobs and military personnel as jobholders, and have been since the Reagan years. ---
**Author:** ![flickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7bcc69/32.png) [@flickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flickster)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/59 "2004-04-06T15:37:05Z")
Not according to the BLS [http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps\_htgm.htm](http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm) > [@](#): > > Who is not in the labor force? > > Labor force measures are based on the civilian noninstitutional population 16 years old and over. Excluded are persons under 16 years of age, all inmates of institutions and persons on active duty in the Armed Forces. All other members of the civilian noninstitutional population are eligible for inclusion in the labor force, and those 16 and over who have a job or are actively looking for one are so classified. The remainder–those who have no job and are not looking for one–are counted as “not in the labor force.” Many who do not participate in the labor force are going to school or are retired. Family responsibilities keep others out of the labor force. Still others have a physical or mental disability which prevents them from participating in labor force activities. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082/60 "2004-04-06T16:11:45Z")
> [@flickster](#): > > If you are bound and determined to include inmates that are unavailable for work, then you should also include all of the military personnel to the other side of the equasion. It will increase the total number in the workforce plus reduce the unemployment rate bacause they are all working. However, just as a simple mathematical fact, this will not have as big a difference on the unemployment rate as adding 2 million people who have a significantly higher unemployment rate does. For example, if you add 2 million people with a 0% unemployment rate then you only reduce the unemployment rate from 5.7% to 5.62%. (And, of course, one would have to compare the percentage of people in the military in our country compared to the other countries we are comparing to. Is ours unusually high in percentage terms?) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-necessarily-believe-bushs-new-jobs-claim/238082.md?page=4)