Dependency By Numbers

What the official unemployment rate really means:

At the end of 2007, Heritage conservatively estimates there were 59.4 million Americans significantly dependent on the government.

By the end of 2010, this number had risen to 67.3 million, an increase of nearly 8 million. It is likely that another two or three million were added in 2011, for a net increase of 10 million to 11 million over the past four years.

It is not a coincidence that the number of people participating in the labor force has comparably declined over the same period.

At the end of 2007, participation in the labor force was 66% of the available working age population, with a labor force of 146.2 million.

By the end of 2011, it was 64%, with a decrease of 5.4 million workers to 140.8 million. The official number of unemployed people rose from 7.7 million at the end of 2007 to 13.1 million at the end of 2011, without any accounting for those who were "too discouraged to look for work."

Nevertheless, as the government has included fewer and fewer people in the category of searching for work, the official unemployment rate continues to fall because both the numerator and the denominator used to make that calculation are losing equal amounts.

According to officialdom, if everybody were out of work and dependent on the government, then the unemployment rate would be zero. Wouldn't that be great?