RUSH: “Target Corp. announced on Tuesday it would no longer offer healthcare coverage to its part-time employees. In a blog post on the companyÂ’s website, Jodee Kozlak, the executive vice president of human resources, framed it as a positive development for part-time employees of the company. ‘The Health Insurance Marketplaces provides new options for healthcare coverage that we believe our part-time members may prefer,’ she wrote. ‘In fact, by offering them insurance, we could actually disqualify many of them from being eligible for newly available subsidies that could reduce their overall health insurance expense.'”

So Target is coming along, and they’re just eliminating health insurance for part-timers on the basis that they’re doing something good for them. Now, I, on the other hand, folks, I’ve got an AP story here today that tells me that Target must be lying about this, because the AP story is all about how Obamacare will affect employers, and the AP story says several times that it will not cause anybody to have their hours cut or lose their jobs. There is an AP story today reporting that. Nobody will have their hours cut. Well, what about those who already have? And nobody will lose their health insurance or their jobs because of Obamacare.

Let me give you a for-instance from the article. “The law isn’t expected to prompt sudden, radical changes for workers. So you probably won’t lose your job due to the overhaul, despite claims by the law’s opponents.” Really? How many people already have? And how many people have been converted from full time to part time? How many people have lost their health insurance? Right here it is, AP says today, none of this is gonna happen. And this story is at Yahoo News, which is low-information headquarters. This is where they go to soak this stuff up.

Here’s another excerpt. “Some companies have said they are cutting part-time workers’ hours to keep them below that threshold. … But the anecdotes of companies cutting employees’ hours aren’t showing up in official U.S. employment numbers. In fact, recent government figures show job gains, not losses.”

It is an out-and-out lie! There aren’t any job gains! There haven’t been 44 months consecutive job growth. Employment is not expanding or increasing. And, in fact, ladies and gentlemen, the real unemployment rate, the actual real unemployment rate that makes total sense is 37%.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Paul Bedard in the Washington Examiner, headline: “Wall Street Adviser: Actual Unemployment is 37.2%.” Be honest with yourself, folks. You hear that 92 million Americans are not working, 92 million while global unemployment is just over 200 million people, and we have half of the world’s unemployed. This is the industrialized world, now. Half of the industrialized world’s unemployed are in America, and they tell us that the unemployment rate is, what, 6.7%?

There are today nine million fewer jobs in the labor force than when Obama was inaugurated in 2009. Nine million jobs that have just vanished. They don’t exist. They are not job openings waiting to be filled. They represent closed businesses, shut-down small businesses, reduced workforces at various businesses. It’s not a pretty picture, and everybody knows it. College graduates can’t find career work.

Heck, they can’t even find part-time work. I mean, full-time work’s being converted to part-time because of Obamacare. There isn’t anything positive in the job market, and it’s got people scared to death for their kids, their grandkids, and even for themselves. It is causing — theoretically, now. It is causing Baby Boomers to not retire. They can’t afford to. They’ve gotta keep working. So they are not turning their jobs over to others, unless they are fired, which is also happening.

But it’s an insult to everybody’s intelligence that the unemployment rate is reported as 6.7%. Even the Drive-Bys in the last two reports have had to admit the number is coming down not because of job growth but because of the reduced labor force. Ninety-two million Americans are out of work. What’s the adult population of the country, 225 million? So of 225 million adults in the country, 92 million aren’t working, and they want to tell us the unemployment rate’s 6.7%?

So here’s this story.

“Don’t believe the happy talk coming out of the White House, Federal Reserve and Treasury Department when it comes to the real unemployment rate and the true “’Misery Index.’ Because, according to an influential Wall Street advisor, the figures are a fraud. In a memo to clients provided to” Paul Bedard, his column called Secrets at the Washington Examiner, “David John Marotta calculates the actual unemployment rate of those not working at a sky-high 37.2% percent, not the 6.7% advertised by the Fed, and the Misery Index at over 14, not the 8 claimed by the government.

“Marotta, who recently advised those worried about an imploding economy to get a gun, said that the government isn’t being honest in how it calculates those out of the workforce or inflation, the two numbers used to get the Misery Index figure. ‘The unemployment rate only describes people who are currently working or looking for work,’ he said,” which is true. It’s called, in labor market lingo, the U-3 (letter U, dash, 3), and that’s the 6.7%, and it only counts people who are looking for work who can’t find it as “unemployed.”

Now, the U-6 number includes people who have recently quit working after 99 weeks of unemployment compensation, and that number is 11.3%. Marotta said, “‘Unemployment in its truest definition, meaning the portion of people who do not have any job, is 37.2%. This number obviously includes some people who are not or never plan to seek employment. But it does describe how many people are not able to, do not want to or cannot find a way to work.

“Policies that remove the barriers to employment, thus decreasing this number, are obviously beneficial,’ he and colleague Megan Russell in their new investors note from their offices…” These people are counsel investors. They advise people where to put their money, where to move it, and in the misery index letter — which I haven’t seen reported much either way anyplace. But it’s a joke that the unemployment rate’s 6.7%.

It’s a joke that there have been 44 months of job creation. It is a joke that the economy is growing. It is a joke that Obama’s numbers are 38%, and Obamacare would be universally popular, but it isn’t, and it isn’t, and it hasn’t happened. It’s not gonna happen. Job growth? It’s impossible. Obama’s shrinking the job market. There are 92 million out of work; 92 million able-bodied adults aren’t working.