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Obama took credit today for an "improvement in the U-3 unemployment numbers. He failed to mention that a whopping 50,000 "new jobs" in the government's figures are temp jobs for the Census. Far more telling is the U-6 unemployment rate, a rate the Obama administration never even mentions. This is looking more and more like we've become Oceania and Obama is speaking from the Ministry of Truth. It won't be long before we begin to see signs like War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.

Broader U-6 Unemployment Rate Rises to 16.9%

Posted Apr 2nd 2010 4:30PM by Connie Madon

The Labor Department issued its monthly unemployment for March. The numbers were upbeat. The unemployment rate held steady at 9.7% and 162,000 new jobs were created. This is the official number and is labeled the U-3 unemployment report. The U-3 category includes people who are without jobs and who are available for work. Wonderful isn't it? Maybe not.

Let's dig a bit deeper into the darker side of the unemployment numbers. What is rarely published are the unemployment numbers under the category labeled U-6. Most people have never heard of the U-6 category because it is rarely cited in headline news.

What is U-6? This category includes everyone in the official rate plus "marginally attached workers" -- those who are neither working nor looking for work, but say they want a job and have looked for work recently. It also includes part time workers who took part time work because they couldn't find full time jobs.

The U-6 data may shock you. It shows that unemployment actually rose 0.1% to 16.9% in March. The highest number was 17.4% in October.

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