When Ted Cruz said it on CNN a couple of Sundays ago, Politifact called it 'mostly false.' |
"Ninety-two million Americans aren't working." |
"Roughly 92 million people in the United States are out of a job." |
That's how Louie Gohmert puts it on his official House website. |
Paul Ryan wouldn't stop repeating it after the State of the Union speech last month. |
"92 million able bodied Americans are not working." |
It's like a grifter's sporting event listening to these guys go on. Of course, they swear they got the number from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Bureau collects data on people it counts as out of the labor force. There were 92.5 million people categorized as not in the labor force last month.
Here's how the BLS defines the classification:
Persons who are neither employed nor unemployed are not in the labor force. This category includes retired persons, students, those taking care of children or other family members, and others who are neither working nor seeking work. Information is collected on their desire for and availability for work, job search activity in the prior year, and reasons for not currently searching.
Here's a chart that illustrates who's out of the labor force by their age.
- 37 million are over the age of 65.
- 17.5 million are over the age of 75.
- 11 million are from 16 to 19 years old.
Since there has been some hand-wringing about the growing number of people counted out of the labor force, here's a chart that shows who's been added to the category from January 1, 2009 to January 31, 2015.
- 7 million people over the age of 60 were added.
- They were 58% of the overall total added.
- Coincidentally, the Social Security Administration says that's almost exactly the same number of workers who retired and started receiving benefits in the same period (counting only retired workers in the table at the link.)
Here's a video that hashes out the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers in a bit more detail.