The BLS January U-3 "official" unemployment rate is 5.7 percent. "Official" means that this is the percentage the MSM reports. It does not include "discouraged" unemployed workers who have not looked for work in the past four weeks because they believe no jobs are available. The U-3 rate makes the Obama administration economic policies appear better than they really are, so the MSM reports it.

This is "unemployment."

The BLS January U-6 unemployment rate, a much more representative figure of economic reality than the U-3 rate, is 11.3 percent. The U-6 rate includes U-3 unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus workers employed part time. A marginally attached worker is one that wants full-time work and has actively looked for a job sometime in the past 12 months. This worker is not considered to be either employed or unemployed, so he/she is not included in the "official" U-3 unemployment rate.

And don't forget ObamaCare's role of increasing part-time workers in all of this. As Dr. Casey B. Mulligan, professor of economics at the University of Chicago, says, "Employers are not required to offer benefits to part-time employees, creating an obvious incentive to reduce working hours and rely on part-time and contract employees instead of full-time workers."

So, marginally attached and part time workers are not reported by the MSM. We're getting closer to "UNEMPLOYMENT."

Then there's the ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment Rate for January, which is 23.2 percent. It begins with the U-6 rate, then adds in the long-term discouraged workers, those who have been discouraged for more than one year but still consider themselves to be unemployed. They have, since 1994, been excluded from all government data. The ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment Rate is calculated monthly by John Williams, and more closely reflects true economic reality. Says Williams:

If you were to survey everyone in the country as to whether they were employed or unemployed, without qualification as to when they last looked for a job, the resulting unemployment rate would be close to the ShadowStats estimate.

As the unemployed disappear after a year into the long-term discouraged category, they are not included in U-3 or U-6 rates. Those workers still are there, ready to take a job if one becomes available. They are unemployed, consider themselves to be unemployed, but the government's and MSM's U-3 reporting ignores them completely.

As Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup, said, "There's no other way to say this. The official unemployment rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed, amounts to a Big Lie."

Twenty-three point two percent unemployed!  We're getting close to "UNEMPLOYMENT." Now let's go all the way.

Comfortable with the U-3 unemployment rate falling from 10 percent in October 2009 to 5.6 percent last month, having the MSM reporting nonexistent "economic improvements" and having a majority of U.S. citizens fooled, the Obama administration has "doubled-down" by combining economics and immigration. Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Center for Immigration Studies reveal that the Obama administration has issued roughly 5.5 million work permits to non-citizens without Congressional authorization.

Government data reveal that about 5.5 million new work permits were issued to aliens from 2009 to 2014, above and beyond the number of new green card and temporary worker admissions in those years. This is a huge parallel immigrant work authorization system outside the limits set by Congress that inevitably impacts opportunities for U.S. workers, damages the integrity of the immigration system, and encourages illegal immigration.

This policy, called a "shadow" or "parallel" immigration system, lessens wages and takes jobs from Americans. In addition to the 5.5 million work permits issued by the Obama administration, 5 million green cards and 3.5 million guest worker permits were authorized by Congress during the 2009-2014 period.

The largest group of work permit recipients has been people entering the U.S. without being inspected. More than 957,200 of them received permanent or "pre-permanent" work permits. Others receiving work permits were 23,215 parolees, nearly 1,000 stowaways, and 49 people suspected of document fraud.

Twenty-three point two percent unemployment rate. And 5.5 million more dumped on top of that. Now that's "UNEMPLOYMENT!" Anything to win elections. Yeah, Obama has "fundamentally changed America."

But that's just my opinion.

Dr. Warren Beatty (not the liberal actor) earned a Ph.D. in quantitative management and statistics from Florida State University.  He was a (very conservative) professor, and specialized in using statistics to assist/support decision-making.  He is now retired.  Dr. Beatty is a veteran who served in the U.S. Army for 22 years.  He blogs at rwno.limewebs.com.