Economic 'recovery' falters yet again

Reuters: Jobless claims rise to near nine-month high​

This is the second week in a row numbers have jumped dramatically, after jobless claims supposedly -- and I emphasize "supposedly" -- fell the last week of November to under 300K, thus bringing the so-called unemployment rate to 7.0% for the first time Great Pretender has been in office. Now, at a season when part-time work traditionally doubles or triples, particularly for college students coming home for Christmas, we're seeing a massive increase?

Something doesn't add up, and I suspect it is because someone under Great Pretender's control is fudging the math. This comes on the heals of a Rasmussen Poll earlier this week that shows that nearly 3/4 of Americans believe we're still in a recession, despite the government's numbers showing we're not. Again, somebody's lying, and it isn't the American people.

 

Extended Unemployment Benefits end for 1.3 million Americans on December 28. Discretionary and disposable income have already taken hits this year, and the implementation of the ACA is going to have a tremendous negative impact on those factors in 2014. Retailers say this is shaping up as an abysmal Christmas season for them, and now we see the likelihood that someone in government is fudging the numbers to make them look good at the end of each month, but eventually that will catch up with them. You can't hide unemployment claims forever.

Meanwhile, our labor participation rate has shrunk to the levels of the late 1970s when we were in the worst recession of the 20th Century. Only 63% of our able-bodied Americans are actually working. This is a sign of a seriously ailing economy, whether there are statistical signs of "recovery" or not.