On Friday, Sept. 6, the heavily anticipated monthly jobs report was released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. You probably just read the headlines and saw that the unemployment rate dropped from 7.4 percent to 7.3 percent, adding 169,000 jobs. Based on this information, you probably thought, “Not bad!”

Wrong.

Monthly jobs reports do not show the true situation the U.S. is in. The unemployment rate dropped because 312,000 people dropped out of the labor force, meaning they stopped searching for jobs if unemployed. This shows how the jobs report numbers aren’t very accurate or truthful at all.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys about 60,000 households each month to come up with their statistics. There are three answers to their survey: You’re employed, you’re unemployed and actively seeking a job, or you’re unemployed and you are not searching for a job.

If you are unemployed and not actively seeking a job, then you are not used in the data. That’s the problem with the unemployment rate that’s being calculated.  This is misleading and generates a false hope in the American people that everything is alright.

In reality, unemployment is upwards of 14 percent, including those that have given up searching for jobs. When the BLS releases numbers saying that the unemployment rate dropped, that’s not because the amount of jobs increased, but because people have simply given up looking for a job and therefore don’t count as unemployed people.

An average of 148,000 jobs have been added per month for the last three months. In 2012, the average number of jobs added per month was 184,000.

Simply put, the number of jobs added per month has declined.

Most of the jobs added are part-time, low paying jobs in retail or food industries. Though they are jobs, they aren’t full-time jobs that can pay enough to put food on the table for a family of four each night.

According to studies done by the Congressional Research Service, to keep up with the growing population of the U.S., the economy needs to be adding at least 200,000 jobs per month.

How long will it take before the U.S. begins to realize that these numbers are being twisted in a way that is misleading?

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