NEW YORK (PNN) - July 19, 2013 - Hardly a day goes by that we don't see some release or comment from a pundit, politician or financial analyst telling us how "solid" the job market is. Well, it's not; and don't take our word for it.

Former Bureau of Labor Statistics chief Keith Hall recently was asked about the unemployment rate, which shows 7.6% of all Amerikans without jobs. His answer was shocking.

"Right now (the standard unemployment rate) is misleadingly low," said Hall, now with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

While it barely got mentioned by mainstream media, Hall says the plunging employment-to-population ratio leads him to believe the real rate of unemployment is much higher than 7.6% - perhaps 10.6%.

How could that be? Ordinarily, during a recovery, the employment-to-population ratio actually increases as more people come off the sidelines and get jobs.

Not so this time. Hall notes that June's 58.7% employment-to-population ratio is actually lower than when the Depression began at the end of 2007.

"I think that's a remarkable statistic," he said; and that may be an understatement.

The BLS itself puts out several "alternative" measures of unemployment. One of them, the so-called U6 gauge, adds to ordinary unemployment those who are discouraged, part-time workers who want full-time jobs, and those who are "marginally-attached" to the workforce.

The real rate of unemployment is about 14.3% - nearly two-thirds higher than when the Depression began in late 2007.

Over the past five years, our own monthly IBD/TIPP Poll shows the total number of those who don't have full-time jobs but want them has consistently hovered above 20 million; and it won't get better. ObamaCare, as a recent survey of employers indicates, is one of the most efficient job-killers ever signed into law.

Add to that record new layers of regulation, higher taxes on entrepreneurs, and soaring debt that will drain capital from private enterprise for decades to come, and it's a wonder we have any job creation at all.

In recent testimony to Congress, Hall made a scary prediction. "We are looking at a decade before the labor market is close to fully recovered," he said, noting that slow economic growth is the biggest problem we face.

"According to our biggest job creators - small business owners - government is playing a big role in holding back the economy," he added.

Quite an indictment of the economic damage of big government from someone who should know.
Sadly, despite ample evidence their policies have failed, illegitimate outlaw President Barack Obama and the progressive wing of the Democrat Party plunge recklessly ahead with their plans to regulate, tax and control the economy to death.

Don't believe media's employment hype. Job creation begins and ends with a healthy, profitable private sector, not with big government and welfare handouts.