Hindrocket over at Power Line has an excellent post that shows that Paul Krugman is playing fast and lose with the facts… again. He compares Krugman’s patently ridiculous argument that all the positive economic news isn’t really positive economic news with evidence directly from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
I agree with Hindrocket that Krugman has gone from a responsible economist to an shrill, partisan, and utterly biased hack. He could be one of the poster children for BDS, and his columns make it abundantly clear why.
Okay, now what large groups of unemployed workers does that BLS statistic NOT cite?
1.) People who leave the work force and return to school.
2.) People who leave the workforce and stop looking for work in favor of staying home with a family.
3.) People who leave the workforce and have been unemployed for more than a year.
4.) People still in the work force but now working a lower-paying or lower-benefitted position than they previously were.
That’s a lot of people. A job at Wal-Mart is not the same as a job at General Motors or a local business. A temporary job loss can lead to a significant loss of benefits gained by seniority. Those BLS statistics are accurate, but the author of that criticism is citing them to prove a point that they simply aren’t suitable or sufficient to prove.