The Question About How Many People Are Employed In America Is Tough To Answer

By Larry Hall


There are a lot of people not working due to the economy in the United States. There are numbers that the government is providing people that may not actually reflect this reality as starkly as it is felt. One of the factors they use to determine the numbers they report is what is called the work force labor rate. It is lower than it has been since the 1970s, so the answer to the how many people are employed in America question is not as clear as it could be.

The population of the United states is about 320,000,000 people. There were about 143,000,000 jobs available in 2007. That number of jobs available, since then, has dropped for a lot of reasons. Some reasons having to do with an aging population and some having to do with antagonism against business by the federal administration.

Currently, in 2017, the powers that be have been reporting that the unemployment rate is less than five percentage points. An observant person will notice that the unemployment rate has a tendency to be where it should be if the person reporting that number needs more votes. The question as to whether that number being reported is correct comes to mind.

Different administrations, often of different political affiliations, will use different criteria when making up these numbers. You will find that, based on a quick computation of your own, that some use numbers that do not add up. This is a danger when trying to pin down the actual number because there are official numbers and then there are numbers that seem closer to the truth.

138,000,000 is the number, by all objective information, of jobs available right now, in 2017. There are about 95 million people out of work who want to work. This does not include the multiple millions that have been forced into part time work who wants full time employment. That 95,000,000 represents those laid off, quit or other reasons and have decided not to look for work anymore simply because there is nothing in their area. Many of those missing jobs, we are told, are not coming back.

At the current unemployment rate setting at five percent, that should mean, out of a total of 320,000,000 persons, 160,000,000 should be working. However, when correcting for those taking unemployment payments and those unable to work because of medical conditions and balancing that with the labor workforce rate, we come up short of that. This where the answer to our question gets rather fuzzy.

The real problem in making sure that any numbers are accurate is because of what are called bias jobs. This name is given to a number made up because of a desire to give a positive spin on the economy and what the politicians are doing. They say that, for everything they are doing, there are so many jobs that just have to exist regardless of reality.

Actually the answer to the question about how many people are working and how many are not is a hard one to come up with. There are large numbers of people who are working only part time. There are those who do not mind that and there are those who must have full time in order to pay their bills. The answer is an embarrassment to those who want to believe their government about something.




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