At the Value Voters Summit in Washington, Paul Ryan falsely claimed that there are 23 million unemployed people in America.
“And here is what we got: prolonged joblessness across the country,” Mr. Ryan said. “23 million Americans struggling to find work.”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 12.5 million people are unemployed. Even if you were to add the 844,000 people that are not actively looking for work, and classified as discouraged workers who are not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them, you only get a total of 13,344,000. And if you add the total 2.6 million people who have not searched for work in the 4 weeks before the U.S. Labor Department count, but searched for work during the preceding 12 months, you only get a number of 15.1 million.
The unemployment rate for women is 7.3 percent and 10.2 percent for Hispanics.
Mr. Ryan basically echoed the statistics that were cited by Clint Eastwood delivering his speech at the Republican National Convention. Mr. Eastwood also said that there were 23 million unemployed people.
“I haven’t cried that hard since I found out that there are 23 million unemployed people in this country,” Mr. Eastwood said. “This administration hasn’t done enough to cure that.”
At the time of Mr. Eastwood’s false claim, there were 12.8 million people unemployed in America.
Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, also claimed during a Fox News interview that no new jobs have been created in America during the Obama administration. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 3.8 million jobs were created under the Obama administration.
