Why Are Unemployment Claims So Low?

• Author: Bryan Miller
• Posted: 2024-03-18

NBC, CBS, CNN and other large corporate media outlets are making the rounds this week with some supposed good news. In between posting articles about how America needs to get into war for humanitarian reasons, they're singing the praises of President Joe Biden by claiming that unemployment claims have been going down every single week. When people who aren't employed want to draw a check, they have to submit an unemployment benefits claim. According to the government and the American media, fewer unemployment claims being filed means fewer unemployed people, and therefore the economy is doing better than it has in years.

For people who actually live in the world and see inflation, the massive labor shortages, and the real-life increases of unemployed people, you may be wondering how these unemployment claims can actually be so low. Well, do not be fooled here. This is actually a little trick that the establishment enjoys playing because it makes their policies look a lot better. This is not something that was started by the Joe Biden administration, but it is something that his administration relies on a lot more heavily than administrations in the past.

Every single day there's another corporate media outlet writing articles with bold, italics and tons of emphatic punctuation about how outstanding it is that the unemployment rates are so low, evidenced by the claims. Though you should know that there's a little bit of trickery happening here.

Claims Don't Count Unless Eligible

Say that 12 million Americans filed for unemployment claims, but only 6 million of those claims were eligible. Well, the government has created a fantastic system for itself, whereby they get to tell everyone that only 6 million people filed for unemployment claims. It's one of those situations that a famous fact-checker site would call 'Mostly true,' as it's in the fine print that a claim has to be valid to count as a claim. If not, it's just disregarded. So if a person quits their job, or has had their claims expire, and they try to file, this claim isn't counted and Americans only hear about the legitimate claims.

Now, of course, no one is suggesting that this is the sole reason that unemployment claims are very suspiciously low, even though we know for a fact that over 40 million people in America are unemployed at the least (that's the number that quit their jobs in 2021 alone). Though it is certainly one of the biggest reasons that the government gets to keep claiming that the filings are so low, and not surprisingly why they lean almost entirely on the filing numbers to paint a better picture about unemployment.

If you're reading this, it's safe to assume you're an adult. In all of your life, have you ever heard the media and a government administration talk so much specifically about unemployment claims being filed, as if that tells some story? The fact is that new jobs are not being created. More and more people are quitting their jobs, or being forced out due to mandates. So, in order to spread some sort of news that's good for the American people, the corporate media complex and the administration have to cling to these unemployment claim numbers to make things look better than they actually are.

America Needs Good News

During the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in America, former President Donald Trump was smeared all over corporate media for declaring that 'America needs good news' during his morning press conferences, where he told people to remain calm and try to live a normal life. The corporate media wanted nothing to do with this; they sell panic, and so you are supposed to panic. Trump was evil for painting a good face on a dire situation. Biden, now doing the same with the economy, is considered a hero for trying to give Americans hope that the economy is not failing. Which is a good thing for a President to do, of course. It's a shame that the mass media only believes so when it's a person they want in office.

The fact is that the economy is doing very poorly over the past year. Inflation is rising more every day. A war could mean a huge economic disaster. Millions are unemployed yet cannot even draw unemployment. So, sure, paint a good face on the situation, but at some point they have to stop leaning on these claims numbers.