The Corruption of Language (5)

The top business news this morning is that the unemployment rate dropped from 10% of the workforce in December to 9.7% in January. That is supposed to be good news.

Reading a little further, however, provides the information that 20,000 jobs were lost in January. So how, if there are fewer jobs, can the unemployment rate drop?

For those who understand third grade arithmetic, calculating the unemployment rate is simple. Count the number of people who say that they are unemployed, divide by the total workforce, and express it as a percentage. That is the Unemployment Rate. Although easy to calculate, it is a seriously misleading number.

To get to the next level of understanding, consider something that former President Bill Clinton might have said: "it depends what the definition of unemployed is." A person who does not have a job but is so discouraged that he or she didn't look for a job last month, or was ill and didn't look for a job either, is neither counted as unemployed nor as a part of the workforce. So, even if the Unemployment Rate drops - as it did this month - it can be because the labor force dropped faster than the increase in the number of unemployed.

Entirely ignored in the headlines are the many people who are working part-time but only because they can not find a full time job. The really important number includes not just the unemployed but also the discouraged and the underemployed. By all reports, that number is above 16% but, because it is downplayed or omitted in the government press releases, is a story that too many journalists neglect to report.

Our government corrupts the language in order to better control us and to provide job security for politicians. The press and other media are, or should be, our shield against government manipulation. If, as too often seems to be the case, the media are lazy and incompetent, then these words, uttered by Abraham Lincoln, may no longer be true:

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."

If we value our liberty, we must continually challenge the government to speak the truth.

Enough said.