Ann Coulter said if we measured unemployment like Canada our rate would be 23%

[DemocratSinceBirth]

That has to be a lie... I just googled it and Canada's unemployment rate is 6.6% . It is unfathomable their methodology is so different from ours and that their unemployment rate is actually 300% lower, especially given the fact their economy largely mirrors ours.

[Kalidurga]

1. So she wants us to be more like Canada?

Kind of a weird stance from someone who identifies as a patriot, but Okay. I am up for single payer health insurance.

[subterranean]

2. She probably pulled that number out of thin air.

That's putting it politely.

[Fred Sanders]

14. She pulled this turd out of where all the con liars's pull "facts" out of.....

[3catwoman3]

38. Or out of...

...somewhere else rather less pleasant.

[Politicalboi]

3. It's the new Repuke math

Since Obama's unemployment numbers are low, we now have to factor in the people who just stop looking and those who's unemployment has stopped, thanks to the GOP. And it's the same math with the ACA.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

5. Whether or not the numbers are incomplete that is how unemployment has been measured "forever"...

[Fred Sanders]

16. Comparing apples to maple syrup...there is no end to the crazy train.

[hedda_foil]

31. No, that's not true.

The government has several times changed the categories the numbers are placed in. The current measure of unemployment fails to include: people who are forced to take part time jobs instead of full time, people who have dropped off unemployment insurance before finding work, etc, etc. Those numbers are available in the unemployment statistics, but not in the number that's used for the official unemployment rate. I find the woman repellent, but there's a chance she's right.

[PowerToThePeople]

4. she must be on drugs

She said something correct?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

7. There is absolutely no way Canada's real unemployment is a nearly a quarter of ours...

That suggests their economy is performing four times better...Given how interconnected the two economies that's impossible.

[PowerToThePeople]

10. your math is wrong

And there is no correlation between employment percentages and how well an "economy" is functioning.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

12. How is my math wrong?

23% is nearly 350% higher than 6.6%

Oh, your observation that there is no correlation between how well an economy is performing and how many jobs it is creating is simply not supported by the facts.

[PowerToThePeople]

13. you are doing it backwards

The difference in employment is 77% vs 94%. (94-77)/77=.22, so 22% more people here need to be working to get to their level of employment by the numbers given.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

22. She said and I quote if we measured unemployment like Canada counts their unemployment rate

She said and I quote if we measured unemployment like Canada counts their unemployment rate our unemployment rate would be twenty three percent.

Without even getting into the minutiae of measuring unemployment in different nations it's counterintuitive to believe wehave nearly three and one half times as many unemployed persons as Canada.


At the peak of the Great Depression the unemployment rate was 25%.

[PowerToThePeople]

25. the 2008 recession

Was nearly as bad, if not worse than the great depression. Luckily, because of that event FDR created a safety net for such instances. If not for that, you would have seen complete chaos in this country the last several years.

[PowerToThePeople]

18. show stats on that claim

Productivity is way up. The work is getting done, just using less people.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

24. Productivity growth is around two, two and one half percent or so.

There is nothing so extraordinary about in productivity growth that you could get that much work done with so few people.

[PowerToThePeople]

27. productivity

Since 2000 we are up nearly 25%. That is very inline with the numbers I just gave, if productivity replaces adding employees.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

29. You have to look at it year by year:

[PowerToThePeople]

32. no, because your chart obscures compound effects

If you have 2% growth for ten years, the end is more then 20% growth over the time frame.

[unrepentant progress]

6. She's sort of right

In the U.S. only people not currently employed, and engaging in "active" job seeking measures are counted as unemployed while Canada counts both "active" and "passive" job seeking measures. What's the difference? Active job seeking is anything that might lead to a job offer, such as filling out applications, mailing resumes, etc. An example of passive job seeking is something like browsing help wanted ads.

So yes, if the U.S. monthly surveys were like Canada's surveys the official unemployment rate would be higher, but definitely not *that* much higher.

[Spazito]

26. Canada's official unemployment rate doesn't include "passive" job seekers but it does..

track them:

4 Non-Participants and Hidden Unemployment

Some supplementary unemployment rates combine the unemployed with groups outside the labour force that indicate some attachment to the labour market.

R5 refers to “discouraged searchers,” people who want to work and are available to take work, but who do not look for a job because they believe no jobs are available. R6 refers to people who are available for work and are waiting to hear from a potential employer. Neither group is included in the official unemployment rate because the people in these groups have not been actively looking for a job.

If discouraged searchers were included in the official unemployment rate, the rate would have been 6.7% in December 2012 instead of 6.5%. If individuals waiting for a job had been included, the unemployment rate would have been 7.2% in December 2012. These two rates always tend to be a little higher than the official unemployment rate.

http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP/ResearchPublications/2013-14-e.htm

[brooklynite]

8. Okay then, what was the employment under Bush?

[Thinkingabout]

9. Maybe it is because Canada has a national health insurance. I doubt Canada wants

Coulter as a resident so maybe she can control her mouth.

[TlalocW]

11. Well!

If she loves Canada's method of computing unemployment so much, why doesn't she just move there?

TlalocW

[NanceGreggs]

17. Maybe she doesn't move here because ...

... her "best-selling books" get dumped here, and can be purchased at any discount store for $2.99 - while they're allegedly on the "best seller list" in the US, and selling at full price.

The last time I saw an Ann Coulter "current best seller" being sold here, there were boxes of them buried under cheap underpants going for 10 cents apiece, or twelve for a buck.

[Agnosticsherbet]

30. Conservative book clubs buy up her books. It's a scam.

http://nomadicpolitics.blogspot.com/2014/11/cooking-books-how-conservative-best.html

[NanceGreggs]

37. I know.

They pre-order and pre-pay for them in bulk, and dump them here (in Canada and elsewhere) where they think no one will notice.

It's not just "conservative book clubs" - it's all kinds of "conservative" organizations.

[Major Hogwash]

15. That was the first thing that came to her mind after she ordered a Canadian bacon pizza.

Whatever other thoughts she may have will eventually find their way out of her empty head and fall out of her mouth, much like how a gumball machine works.

[Spazito]

19. LOL, she was sure Canada fought in Vietnam too..

wrong again. Here's an old DU thread about it, lol:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3038296

[pinboy3niner]

35. That was the first thing I thought of, too. :) nt

[MannyGoldstein]

20. She was in the Arts school

Which explains her innumeracy (sp?)

I was in Engineering which would explain my (sp?)

[JHB]

21. Ahh, take off, eh?!

[Doctor_J]

23. Yes and when Bush was president it would have been 38%

Andy's a congenital liar

[DemocratSinceBirth]

28. I get it...If you stop looking you are no longer counted.

But it's been calculated that way for every administration not just this one.

[tammywammy]

36. Did you mean to call her a man's name? n/t

[stevenleser]

33. For anyone wanting to slice and dice it, there are six measurements from the Dept of Labor's bureau

of labor and statistics. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

U-6 includes everyone except those that have done absolutely nothing to try to find a job for 365 days or more. Right now U-6 is at 11%.

There are folks who will try to tell you that there are tons of people out there who desperately want a job but who have not tried at all in any way to find one in the last 12 months. I think that number of people is extremely small. If included it might raise the U-6 number to 11.2% at most.

In general, if you want to use the most broad measure possible, U-6 is a good number to use. But again, its only good by itself. Using it to compare performance of this administration to previous ones is apples and oranges.

FYI, when you look at the above linked chart, U-3 is the official unemployment rate.

[PowerToThePeople]

34. rec

[djean111]

39. I would be interested to see how many jobs are part time, and how much jobs are paying,

perhaps by minimum wage, less than minimum wage (waiters), things that would show just how many of these jobs are enough to live on. And how many people are holding down two (or more) jobs.