Real Unemployment Rate is 11.2%

Civilian Participation Rate Annual Numbers
The official unemployment rate has fallen from 8.6% to 8.5% and the average person will not question the statistic. While using the current unemployment rules the figure is correct, workers who are discouraged and fail to make unemployment claims and/or fail to look for work are dropped from the calculations, it certainly is not reflective of the overall economy.
Briefly I use the July 1999 economy because federal spending was at 18.2% of the GDP, today it is 25.3%, and the civilian participation rate peaked at 67.9%, today it is at a 28 year low of 63.8%. Simply put this 1999 economic performance is not some fantasy, it has been achieved and could be duplicated with effective federal government management team that understood the proper role of limited government.

The media is reporting jobs added but the BLS reports a loss of jobs.

The labor force dropped for the fifth strait month from 154,812,000 to 153,373,000. Using the “1999” criteria the labor force, combined with population growth rates, would be 158,491,000 or 5,118,000 more workers.
Employed workers dropped in December from 141,070,000 to 140,681,000 or a loss of 389,000 workers. Using the “1999” criteria workers with jobs would number 151,394,000. Using this data it is apparent there are approximately 10,713,000 American who would prefer to work but are not due to extremely poor macroeconomic policies.
Doing the math the “1999” unemployment rate is 11.2%. this is pretty close to a estimate by Zero Hedge that was 11.4%.