A little Obama scorecard for you to end the week.  There’s a lot of horse squeeze being thrown about in this campaign, and unfortunately the dumb masses aren’t educated to the point that they can understand reality from fantasy. 

Here’s an example of where the rank and file voters out there simply don’t understand figures bandied about in the news. Unemployment figures.  Right now Caesar Obammus and his attendants are touting an 8.5% unemployment rate.  But … have you ever asked yourself “8.5% of what?”  The unemployment rate is presented as a percentage of something .. but most of you have never spent ten seconds asking that question:  “8.5% of what?”  Well … let’s see; there are several possibilities:

• Are we talking about 8.5% of the total number of people in this country.  Well .. no, that doesn’t quite make sense.  That would include school children and retired people.  These people either can’t work or could, but don’t want to. 

• Maybe it’s 8.5% of people between the age of 18 and 65; what many view as the normal working years.  But again, many of these people are still in school and don’t want a job; or they’re stay-at-home moms handling America’s most difficult job – raising a family.

• How about 8.5% of everybody who has ever had a job, but is not yet eligible for Social Security?  That doesn’t seem to work either.  Again … what about someone who met their true love on the job – got married, and no longer even WANTS to work? 

You see the problem, don’t you.  And here you are (speaking not so much to talk radio listeners as I am to the dumb masses) listening to these unemployment figures and you can’t even tell me what percentage of what we’re talking about.

OK .. here you go.  We’re talking about people in the workforce.  The current unemployment figure is 8.5% of those people in the workforce … Here’s your definition:

Got it?  So … here’s the rub.  The workforce is smaller today than it was when Caesar took office.  Economists tell us that our workforce participation rate is now at 64%  One continuing sign of employment weakness is the still-low labor force participation rate, which remained unchanged at 64%. That would be 64% of the people in this country defined by the Labor Department as “working age” who are legally entitled to hold a job.  (That is … not illegal aliens). 

Here’s where the numbers get bad for Obama.  The workforce is smaller.  Our population is larger, but the workforce is smaller.  That 64% figure is down from 64.3% a year ago. Another 50,000 workers left the labor force in December, suggesting that many Americans have simply stopped looking for work … in 2007 when jobs were plentiful the labor force participation rate was 66%. The two percentage point decline is the equivalent of about three million fewer Americans working or looking for work.

So … another look at that 8.5% unemployment rate.  If the workforce were as large today as it was when Obama took office … in other words, if all of these people (50,000 last month) hadn’t just said “the hell with it” and stopped even looking for a job … the unemployment rate today, according to Bloomberg,  would be 10.9%. 

Well … enough. I could get into debt and spending figures, but hey … it’s Friday.  No sense getting everyone all depressed. 

Then again … just in case you really want to worry about something ...