Friday's Unemployment Is a Creation of Politicians

By John Tamny

Tomorrow the Bureau of Labor Statistics will announce the unemployment rate for September. While economists’ projections ahead of the announcement suggest it’s going up, the bigger story is how government intervention in the private economy drives what should be a naturally low number much higher.

For background, in his 1978 classic, The Way The World Works, the late Jude Wanniski addressed per capita income within countries. While income per individual in the U.S. dwarfed that within India, Wanniski argued that India’s low number was almost certainly unreliable given the desire among its citizens to hide their economic activity from an overbearing, socialist government.