NC jobless rate falls to 8.8 percent in May?, Greensboro News Record AP, Labor force participation rate dropped .1 percent, Dishonest media reports, Dishonest Bernanke report

“11.4%: What the U.S. unemployment rate would be if labor force participation were back to January 2008 levels.” …James Pethokoukis, American Enterprise Institute, June 2013

“Although the numbers are not directly comparable, local labor markets
across much of North Carolina began 2013 no differently than they
began 2012,” said Quinterno. “Simply put, unemployment rates remain
elevated across the state, and twice as many North Carolinians are
jobless and seeking work than was the case five years ago.”…SBN Strategies March 22, 2013

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”…George Orwell, “1984″

The Greensboro News Record on Friday June 21, 2013 regurgitated an AP report about the May unemployment rate in NC. The report was misleading and dishonest.

“NC jobless rate falls to 8.8 percent in May”

“North Carolina’s unemployment rate dropped to 8.8 percent in May from April’s revised rate of 8.9 percent, marking the fourth straight month of slow improvement in the measure of economic health for workers, the state Commerce Department said Friday.

“The headline is going to say that unemployment goes down a notch,” said Robert Whaples, chairman of the economics department at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem. “But it’s not really that beautiful of a change from a month ago.”

North Carolina remains stuck with the country’s fifth-highest unemployment rate behind Nevada, Illinois, Mississippi and Rhode Island. The national rate rose from 7.5 percent in April to 7.6 percent in May.

The numbers show the total number of employed in North Carolina rose by about 1,000 people between April and May, while the total number of unemployed workers dropped by nearly 2,500, Whaples said. Equally meaningful is that even as the state’s population continues to grow, the number of people in the labor force _ people who are of working age who have a job or are looking for one _ dropped in May by about 1,400, signaling people are still dropping out and ending their job search, Whaples said.

The number of people employed in North Carolina has increased by more than 37,000 in the past year, but there are still more than 416,000 people listed as unemployed.”

“”That’s the good news. Our employment in this state has not fallen since the beginning of the recession. It hasn’t gotten better. It went down. It came back up. so we’re sort of back where we started,” he said. “The last few months haven’t been much. The last year, it’s been enough to keep up with population growth. But it could be worse.””

Read more:

http://www.news-record.com/news/north_carolina_ap/article_f2cad77b-33b3-5f27-914b-fb285076ebd9.html

Now I’m not a rocket scientist, but I can read.

So I went to the NC labor data website and found that the labor force participation rate in NC fell .1 percent in May. That fully accounted for the .1 percent drop in the unemployment rate.

Can’t the folks at the News Record or the AP read?

Don’t they care?

Or is this part of an agenda?

And what about Ben Bernanke stating that the US unemployment rate could fall to 6.5 percent in 2014.

That sounds dishonest to me.

Especially when the current US unemployment rate is 11.4 percent based on 2008 labor rates.

And when you use the May 2008 labor force rate for NC the current NC unemployment rate is 11.5 percent.

Don’t take my word for it.

Check it for yourself.

http://esesc23.esc.state.nc.us/d4/LausSelection.aspx