The true rate of unemployment

By Marc Jeric, Las Vegas

Sunday, Oct. 12, 2014 | 2:01 a.m.

There are 124.5 million Americans in their prime working years (ages 25-54). Nearly one-quarter of this group — 28.9 million people, or 23.2 percent of the total — is not currently employed.

They either became so discouraged that they left the labor force entirely, or they are in the labor force but unemployed. This group of nonemployed individuals is more than 3.5 million larger than before the recession began in 2007, according to the Senate Budget Committee. President Barack Obama’s bureaucrats do not count these people as unemployed; according to them, these workers “left the work force.” In other words, they exhausted their unemployment benefits. Thus, the true unemployment rate is not the official 6.2 percent but closer to 14 percent.