By Richard Bilies of AllThingsPoliticalToday.com

This past Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released their monthly jobs report. It showed a seasonally adjusted increase 243,000 jobs for the month of January. At the same time, the BLS announced that the jobless rate had dropped to 8.3%.

As expected the President and his surrogates ran to their microphones to trumpet the “good” news far and wide. Happy days are here again! The economy is moving forward on an ever-increasing trajectory. “My plan is working”, according to the President. But is it really working?

There are numbers to know and numbers to show. The Friday announcement were the numbers to show. But without the numbers to know, the public doesn’t get the full unvarnished truth. And believe me it isn’t pretty.

The unemployment rate is based on a percentage of the American workforce. The higher the number of people ion the workforce, the higher the unemployment rate. As the number of people in the American workforce decreases, the lower the unemployment rate. It’s fairly elementary.

Of course, neither the Bureau of Labor Statistics nor the White House is in the business of pure truth telling, hence there was no mention that the American economy shed an incredible 2.422 million jobs in one month.The lower unemployment rate is a statistical anomaly based on standard economic models that in a long downturn like we are experiencing, is simply not valid.

Lost in the Greek chorus of the mainstream media is the fact that the American has been shrinking ever since the start of Barack Obama’s term began. The BLS calls this the Labor Force Statistics and it has been trending downward for some time now. Partly, it’s the result of the retirement of the baby boomers and partly it’s due to people leaving the labor force in despair. If you look at the linked chart, you will see a sharp drop starting at the beginning of the current recession in 2009 and continuing until today.

The recession was not started by Barack Obama but some would point to Democratic policies on mortgages and housing as part of the problem. However, his administration has simply done nothing to alleviate the problems and kick-start the economy. Up until now they have not helped the American economy as a whole, but only Democrat constituencies.

Stimulus spending has been directed to such favored groups as seniors, public sector employees and union workers. Rather than assist private industry to create the conditions that create new jobs, the Obama administration has chosen to lean on government to do that job. Statistics don’t lie when the number of employed Americans drops through the floor.

Statistical anomalies don’t put food on the table. The American economy cannot prosper at the current employment levels. The society that Americans want and enjoy cannot be maintained with decreasing levels of total employment. In order to survive and prosper as a country, we need to increase our overall employment but it seems that this administration is not capable of achieving that goal.