Underreported Unemployment Generates Feel-Good Headlines

The credibility gap is widening between what theObama administration says about the jobs picture and what Americans sense is the grim reality. Despite the official line that things are getting better, the employment situation is growing progressively worse.

You would never know this from the headlines. The Labor Department reported Thursday that initial unemployment claims for the previous week had fallen by 1,000. This was the sixth reported decline in the last eight weeks. The overall impression is that the situation is improving, slowly but surely.

Over that same period, however, the actual number of new jobless per week has increased by almost 40,000. The Obama administration is managing perceptions by revising the weekly numbers upward after the fact. Every week for at least the last eight weeks, the initial jobless number has been raised after it was released, sometimes significantly. So while the combined initial figures over that period show a 13,000 new jobless decline, this is only because 49,000 jobless were not included in the initial reports.

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