'Actual US unemployment stands at 17%'

Now about those jobs the left claim Americans won't do.......

The actual unemployment rate in the US is nearly 17 percent, much higher than the nine-point-one percent recently released by the government, an economist says.


“If you include people who are long-term unemployed and those who are discouraged workers, the number actually adds up to about 17 percent of the US labor forces,” Fadhel Kaboub said in an interview with Press TV on Saturday.

The Labor Department announced on Friday that the number of jobless people in the country hit 14 million in May, showing an unemployment rate of 9.1.

“About the 25 to 30 million people are actually unemployed in the US labor workforce today. So, the statements coming out of the White House are overly optimistic, to say the least,” added Kaboub, a professor of Economist at the Denver University, Ohio.

The economist argued that the figures released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics only has to do with people who have been actively seeking work within the last four weeks, saying this number is “actually misleading.”

Kaboub criticized the US government over its spending policies, saying Washington is spending on Wall Street bailout as opposed to spending to create jobs.

“The only thing that can boost economic growth is government spending,” the analyst pointed out.

Kaboub made a reference to the loss of nearly eight million jobs during the recent economic recession in the US and argued that to make up for that loss the country would need to “create at least 500,000 jobs every month and we're not even close to that number.”

Additionally, the US is already struggling with a weak housing market, with house prices now falling to their 2002 level.