[SawbasyWrab]

The early Feb 2011 report from the U.S. Govt. Bureau of Labor and Statistics said unemployment was at 9.0%.

However, two major factors in the lower number were 1) temp. Xmas jobs, and 2) the rising now nearly 7 million unemployed people not counted in the BLS unemployment figure because they are so discouraged they haven't looked for work in the past four weeks prior to the report. The BLS tracks these people, they know these people exist, are unemployed and want and need to work, but because they haven't reported having done anything to look for work in the past four weeks, they're not counted as even being in the labor force.

These two factors greatly throw the BLS figure off from the true unemployment rate.

Also, the BLS report in early February doesn't cover much of January. It covers the period of the second week in December through the first week in January, when many people have been added to the employment rolls for temp. full-time Xmas shopping-related work.

In early March we'll get a more accurate assessment minus the newly laid-off temp. Xmas help, as that report will cover the second week in January through the First week of February.

The BLS figure is not derived from data reported from unemployment offices throughout the country. It is determined through a series of interviews conducted each month by the census bureau, in which 150,000 businesses are contacted and 60,000 households (involving about 120,000 people or so) are contacted and the figure is determined.

I can't comment about the Gallup polls accuracy.

But when the temp Xmas jobs are gone and if we rightly include the nearly 7 million discouraged workers in the computation, the true unemployment rate closes in on 13% nationally, with many regions hit much harder than 13%.

Remember, there is so far no great incentive for major corporations to hire domestically. Illegal immigrant-hiring (risky for businesses though) and off-shoring American jobs to foreign wage-slave labor, is all the rage for major corporations who are expanding over-seas (which is why "our" "economy" seems stable in the face of horrific unemployment).

Small business, however, which amounts to around 98% of all businesses according to a friend of mine who works at one of the major credit bureaus and tracks this information, businesses whose customers are mostly domestic, are still hurting. Because of the domestic crisis in unemployment, these businesses still lag in sales, and they've had to cut back in employees, over-work the employees they have or hire illegals at wage-slave labor rates (just to stay in business).