There are lies, damn lies, and then there's President Bush.

In today’s press conference King George proudly proclaimed that the unemployment data are very encouraging. The unemployment rate is 4.8%, if W is to be believed.

Here are some statistics that he did not mention. Figures quoted below are for February 2006, the last month for which Bureau of Labor Statistics are available, and for comparison, February 2001, when Bush was newly installed in the White House.

Though the population increased by 6.38% the labor force increased by only 4.60%. Put another way, the rate of job growth was 62.2% of the rate of population growth. The unemployment rate is up 10.87% over the course of Bush’s presidency. [5.1% in 2/06 vs. 4.6% in 2/01] And the number of people unemployed has gone up almost 18%.

The percentage of Americans in the workforce has declined from 67% to 65.7% on his watch. I find the most tragic statistic to be that the number of Americans over 16 years of age who would like a job but are too discouraged to be counted in the workforce has risen 6.88%.

In five years the Bush economic program has produced 5,417,000 jobs. In the comparable period, Bill Clinton’s gets credit for creating 9,690,000 jobs, which, means that Clinton outperformed Bush by almost 79%.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”