And we are off and running a big thanks to Mr. B’s class for helping us kick off our Last Week of the school year. I am Carl Azus as you heard them say. Let’s go ahead and get to some of today’s headlines.
First up, Syria’s president says his government is the target of the (international) conspiracy. Then many world leaders have accused Syria government forces of carrying out a massacre against civilians recently. But in the speech yesterday, Syria president Bashar Al Assad said his government forces had nothing to do with this. He said quote: even monsters do not do what we saw. Al Assad blamed the violence on terrorists.
From the crisis in Syria, we’re heading to a country that went through a political revolution last year. We’re talking about Egypt. For nearly 30 years, that country was run by a man named Hosni Mubarak. But protest and uprising forced Mubarak out of power. He was put on trial for ordering the killing at protestors during that revolution. He said he didn’t violate any laws. Mubarak who was wearing sunglasses here was found guilty. Over the weekend, he and one of his former officials were sentenced to life in prison. That decision led to new protests. Some people were angry that Mubarak wasn’t given the death penalty. Others were upset that 6 other former officials were (cleared) of the same charges. Mubarak’s lawyer said he’s planning to appeal the verdict.
Today Shoutout goes out to Mr. Runion’s social students classes at Nome-Beltz Jr.-Sr. High School in Nome, Alaska. What part of the US government collects and releases the national unemployment rate? Here we go. Is it the Commerce Department, Treasury Department, Labor Department or Interior Department? You’ve got 3 seconds. Go. Unemployment information is (collected) by a division of Labor Department. That’s your answer and that’s your Shoutout.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is part of the Labor Department, releases that unemployment information every month. Last Friday, the agency put out the new numbers for May. And most analysts agree that the news is not good. The national unemployment rate went up from 8.1% in April to 8.2% in May. That is the first time that this rate has increased since last June. And the economy added jobs, but only (69,000) of them last month, when economists have predicted that the number would be close to 150,000. The news hit Wall Street hard. When the unemployment rate came out, the stock market took a dive. All the gains that have been made so far this year were all wiped out on Friday. All right, anyone’s here talking about something like the unemployment rate, this 8.2% figure, you might be wondering how the government comes up with this number. T F’s gonna to break it down for us right now.
Like an economy heart beat, the unemployment rate is one of the most closely wash indicators of the country’s financial health. So how exactly is it calculated? Out of more than 300,000,000 people in American, when you take out the children, the retired folks and others, the Bureau of Labor Statistic says about half of us have jobs. And another 13,000,000 or so are unemployed. That number does not come from the number of unemployment checks-being issue as many people imagine. Instead, every month since 1940, the federal government has conducted the survey of 50-60,000 households, asking people about their income, their race, their education and what kind of jobs they do or do not hold. Everyone over 16 is classified to 1of 3 ways. Employed, meaning that person has a job; unemployed, meaning he or she is available for work and looking for a job, but cannot find one; or three, out of the workforce, meaning this person is not seeking work. The Feds then take the math from the (sample), apply to the entire population, then voila, there is the unemployment rate. But beyond that, critics complain there’re basic flaws in this system. For example, if you stop actively seeking work, you’re no longer considered unemployed. That’s a problem, because in really bad economy, a lot of folks might just give up looking for some period of time, even though they still want jobs. That could artificially lower the unemployment rate, even as actual unemployment is as bad or worse than ever. Another problem for the government, a job is a job, is a job, is a job. So if somebody loses 100,000 dollar a year, position and is not flipping burger from minimum wage, he is considered just as employed as he was before.