EDITORIAL: Figures don’t lie, but …

Donald Trump has delivered a few bombastic statements during the course of his presidential campaign. But last week, in one key area, the Republican nominee hit the bull’s-eye.

The Obama administration touts the nation’s unemployment rate of 4.9 percent. But the figure fails to reflect a number of important factors that would inflate the rate — and Mr. Trump wasn’t afraid to say as much recently. “The 5 percent figure is one of the biggest hoaxes in American modern politics,” he said.

David Sirota of the International Business Times argues that Mr. Trump’s statement is right on and has a broad swath of supporters. He notes that Mr. Trump has joined a bipartisan chorus of business interests, economists and lawmakers who argue that the monthly employment report is an artificial portrait deliberately airbrushed to make the jobs picture look better than it really is.

Mr. Trump’s statement came in the wake of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ report finding that the economy added 225,000 jobs in July, allowing the unemployment rate to remain stable. But the 4.9 percent “official” figure doesn’t take into account those who are underemployed or have stopped looking for work.

Nor is all this the result of some right-wing attempt to whitewash the president’s economic record.

Mr. Sirota points out that the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute argues these 2.3 million “missing workers” would bump the jobless rate to 6.2 percent.

In addition, Leo Hindery, a private equity executive and longtime Democratic Party economic adviser, publishes a monthly email in which he compiles Labor and Census data, then adjusts to provide a more accurate unemployment picture. His latest numbers conclude that there are 2 million “marginally attached workers” — defined as those who had looked for a job sometime in the past year and are available for work, but no longer in the labor force. In addition, there are a whopping 5.9 million “part time of necessity” workers — those Mr. Hindery says are “unable to find full-time jobs or who’ve had their hours cut back.”

If those two groups of workers are counted, Mr. Hindery says, the unemployment rate shoots up to 9.7 percent.

But it’s actually worse than that. Mr. Hindery identifies another 4.3 million men and women who say they want to work but haven’t sought employment. That puts the real jobless figure at 12.1 percent.

These numbers much more accurately reflect the plight of everyday Americans in the wake of the feeble Obama recovery from the Great Recession. It’s time to modify the unemployment formula and tell it like it is. We deserve no less — particularly in an election year.