Trump’s absurd claim that 92 million Americans represent a ‘nation of jobless Americans’ [View all]

[Gothmog]

I keep hearing this sad talking point from right wingers https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/09/16/trumps-absurb-claim-that-92-million-americans-represent-a-nation-of-jobless-americans/?tid=pm_politics_pop_b

“Right now, 92 million Americans are on the sideline outside of the workforce, and they’re not a part of our economy. It’s a silent nation of jobless Americans.”

— Donald Trump, speech to the Economic Club of New York, Sept. 15, 2016

Trump is grabbing onto a GOP talking point that first emerged in 2014 when the official unemployment rate starting falling below 7 percent. (It is now 4.9 percent.) Republicans started citing a decline in the labor participation rate, which has occurred largely because the baby boom generation has begun to retire.

But here, Trump expresses the rate as a raw number (“92 million Americans”) and then amps up the rhetoric by referring to a “nation of jobless Americans.” But this is rhetorical poppycock, as we will demonstrate.....

The Pinocchio Test

As you can see, it is absurd to claim that 94 million Americans are on the sidelines of the economy and are part of a “jobless America.” You can’t be jobless if you don’t want a job.

Only a small percentage of these people want a job, as the rest are retired, in school, on disability or caring for children. No matter how much Trump wants to suggest the economy is on the rocks, the fact remains that the unemployment rate is below 5 percent — which is pretty good by any measure.

Four Pinocchios