The slideshow illustrates the unemployment data for each July for the last decade, 2002 to 2011.

The White House and its allies have been touting the claims contained in the Council of Economic Advisers’ latest quarterly report that

the Recovery Act is already responsible for 2.5 to 3.6 million – or about 3 million – jobs

The table above was created using the data from the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. These are the government’s own numbers, used by their agencies and a wide variety of private businesses for planning and decision making.

The number of Americans employed has decreased by over 3.1 million since the Obama administration took office. True unemployment, the total unemployed and the total discouraged from looking for work, has increased over the same time frame by nearly 3.2 million Americans.

U.S. employment levels, 2009-2010, BLS data. Click for a larger image.

Numbers of Americans unemployed 2009-2010, BLS data. Click for a larger image

True unemployment includes those unemployed and looking for work and those no longer looking, the discouraged. The true unemployment rate on January 31, 2009 was 8.9%. As of June 30, 2010 it was 11.38%.

Americans no longer looking for work 2009-2010, discouraged, BLS data. click for a larger image.

When the Obama Administration took office, 65.7% of the population participated in the work force. That rate is now 64.7%. In January 2009, 60.6% of the population was working and that rate is now 58.5%.

U.S. civilian labor force participation 2009-2010, BLS graph. Click for a larger image.

U.S. employment to population ratio, BLS. graph. Click for a larger image.

For the White House claims to be correct, either the BLS data is wrong, or the Recovery Act prevented unemployment from reaching a level of 6 million Americans. The data clearly demonstrates that about 3 million fewer Americans are no longer working.

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics

Total Civilian Work Force

Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 240,000 in October, and the unemployment rate rose from 6.1 to 6.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. October’s drop in payroll employment followed declines of 127,000 in August and 284,000 in September, as revised. Employment has fallen by 1.2 million in the first 10 months of 2008; over half of the decrease has occurred in the past 3 months. In October, job losses continued in manufacturing, construction, and several service-providing industries. Health care and mining continued to add jobs.

Unemployment (Household Survey Data)

The unemployment rate rose by 0.4 percentage point to 6.5 percent in October, and the number of unemployed persons increased by 603,000 to 10.1 million. Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 2.8 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 1.7 percentage points.

The unemployment rates for adult men (6.3 percent), adult women (5.3 percent), whites (5.9 percent), and Hispanics (8.8 percent) rose in October. The jobless rates for teenagers (20.6 percent) and blacks (11.1 percent) were little changed. The unemployment rate for Asians in October was 3.8 percent, not seasonally adjusted.

Among the unemployed, the number of persons who lost their job and did not expect to be recalled to work rose by 615,000 to 4.4 million in October. Over the past 12 months, the size of this group has increased by 1.7 million.

In October, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) rose by 249,000 to 2.3 million. The long-term unemployed accounted for 22.3 percent of total unemployment. The newly unemployed–those who were jobless fewer than 5 weeks–increased by 212,000 to 3.1 million in October.

Total Employment and the Labor Force (Household Survey Data)

The civilian labor force participation rate (66.1 percent) and the employment-population ratio (61.8 percent) were little changed in October. Since a recent high in December 2006, the employment-population ratio has declined by 1.6 percentage points.

Unemployment Rate for All Races

Unemployment Rate for Whites

Unemployment Rate for Blacks

Unemployment Rate for Hispanics

Economic analysis is a tricky business. By selecting the right data, an analyst can make any premise appear correct. One of the most blatant ways of doing this is to select the most recent data that supports the premise you want to illustrate.

The overall unemployment rate in the United States in September has been initially reported as 6.1%. This rate and the numbers behind it will be revised several times over the next few months, but let’s work with what we have.

The highest unemployment rate under George Bush was 6.3% in June of 2003. The highest under Bill Clinton was 7.3% in January 1993. June of 1992 was George Bush the elder’s high, 7.8%. Reagan’s high was in the two months of Novermber and December 1982, 10.8%.

The Economist defines full employment as:

Jobs for all that want them. This does not mean zero unemployment because at any point in time some people do not want to work. Also, because some people are always between jobs, there will usually be some frictional unemployment. Full employment means that everyone who wants work and is willing to work at the market wage is in work. Most governments aim to achieve full employment, although nowadays they rarely try to lower unemployment below the nairu: the lowest jobless rate consistent with stable, low inflation.

What unemployment rate can be considered “full employment”? Not zero, because there will alwyas be people changing jobs – frictional unemployment. There may not be a “full employment” rate because conditions change in the labor market, and in the business cycle overall that affect the labor market.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) took a stab at it in 1999, with a “full-employment unemployment rate” of 4 to 6.4%. The problem with this estimate is that the extremely low unemployment rates of the late 1990′s failed to produce the expected inflation, suggesting that full employment may be an even lower rate, or else some major economic theories were all wrong.

The United States is now a post-industrial economy. The theories and norms for such an economy are new and untested. Most of what we have to work with are theories developed for an industrial economy and, as just described, they may no longer apply. The ties between inflation and unemployment may no longer be as they were in the 1960′s.

That statement has profound implications for the interest rate policies of the Federal Reserve, but that is another post indeed.

The following statements are true according to the data as presented.

An overall unemployment rate of 6.1% is well below all but one of the peaks in the last 28 years.

The September 2008 Black unemployment rate of 11.4% would have been a low from 1980 to mid 1994.

The September 2008 rate of Hispanic unemployment of 7.8% would be a low for all the months and years from mid 1980 through mid 1997 other than for a few months in 1990.

Unemployment rates have been worse in the last thirty years. For Blacks and Hispanics, the current rates are as close to record lows as they are to peak unemployment rates. Overall, it appears that unemployment rates are trending lower if you consider the period 1980 to date.

In this new economy, is there a trend we can determine? Or, are we still not far enough in to the post-industrial age to make such statements? For example, does this economy generate more jobs that come and go versus the industrial economy? Is it part and parcel of this economy that the job market will churn more and that jobs will have a finite life span resulting in higher unemployment?

Or, is the opposite true? Does the economy generate so many jobs that the unemployment rate will stay low despite any churning in the labor market?