OCCUPY THE STATISTICS

UNMASKING THE LIES

To unmask the lies within any set of government statistics the first thing to look at is who not is included and who is included. Here, I am going to use the Australian statistics of employment and unemployment as a working example. This can be applied to any country with just a little bit of research. I apologize if this article is a little dry but numbers, facts, figures and percentages are hard to make super exciting. The interesting bit is how they are manipulated to produce falsehoods.

Right now Australia is boasting a low 5.25% unemployment rate. But how accurate is this? Who is and who is not counted?

NOT COUNTED

The homeless: it would be fair to say the homeless are likely to be unemployed. Objection.

Under 15 year olds: fair enough. There are child labour laws for a reason. No Objection.

Over 65 year olds: Many over 65 year olds need to work. Some do work and some are looking for work. Objection.

Anyone in a mental or rehabilitation facility or hospital: Surely these people will need to work upon their return home. Objection.

Adult students: Most students need to work to survive. Objection.

So, is Australia's unemployment rate really 5.25%? Clearly it isn't. The only people included are between the age of 15 and 65 years old who are not adult students, homeless, in hospital or in an institution.

Are the other 94.75% in full-time employment, receiving AWOTE's calculated average wage? No, they are not. AWOTE (Average Weekly Ordinary Time Earnings) only calculates full-time workers. It excludes part-time and casual workers, of which there are 3 407 100, anyone institutionalized, those in hospital, the unemployed, adult students and the homeless. So, realistically AWOTE figures are completely useless. I could pull a figure out of my imagination and have a better chance of being more accurate.

The Australian population is 22 742 803 people. Of these, 18% are under 15 years of age leaving our 15 and over population at 18 649 098. 13.5% of the Australian population is over the age of 65. So, what we really have here is:

3 070 278 over 65 year olds who may or may not be retired, still working or in need of work. Over 3 million people ticking the unknown box hardly leads to accurate figures!

19 672 525 people are left minus adult students, the institutionalized, those in hospital and the homeless. There are 2.118 million adult students in public funded university's and Apprenticeship Incentive Programs. The figures for institutionalized, homeless and hospitalized people are not included in The Australian Bureau of Statistics.

So, what is the real unemployment rate in Australia? 5.25% plus adult students 9.31%

Total 14.56%. Plus all those for whom there no figures available and who amount to over 3 million!

The true figures can only be approximated as between 15 and 30% unemployed and a further 15% under-employed in part-time and casual work.

So, what looked like 94.75% of the population in full-time employment, turns out to be 55% in reality.

Unmask the lies. OCCUPY!