The government and liberal media are manipulating the statistics, bad even in their gentler form at a consistent 9.7% unemployment rate. As I quoted elsewhere, when you include the millions who have given up on finding a job, or who are working 32 hours or less under the threat of lossing their jobs if they don't, unemployment is projected to actually be somewhere between 17 to 22% (as G-man also sourced, earlier in this topic).
16.9 percent as of last month. They've been keeping track of those expanded numbers for the last 15 years, but only at a national level.
If the government is cooking the books, they're doing a shitty job. Otherwise, they'd be 'glossing over' numbers like what happening in the state of Michigan or in the metropolitan El Centro, CA area. The only fault lies in the criterea for what's considered 'employed' vs. 'unemployed' in their surveying methods, and that hasn't really changed in quite a while.
