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On Friday the U.S. Labor Department reported that 257,000 jobs were created in January, as the Unemployment rate rose to 5.7% as more Americans were seeking employment.

The Labor Department revised the employment numbers of nonfarm employment by 147,000 for both November and December.

In its report the labor force participation rate increased by 0.2 percentage points to 62.9 percent in January, following a decline of the same magnitude in the prior month. The employment-population ratio was little changed at 59.3 percent in January. Among the employed, the number of persons working part time for economic reasons was 6.8 million, about unchanged over the month. These individuals would have preferred full-time employment, but had their hours cut or were unable to find full-time work.

Market Watch commented that for all the progress in the labor market, though, millions of Americans are still left out. Some 18 million people who want a full-time job still can’t find one, including 6.8 million workers who have been forced to work part-time instead.

If those people are taken into account, the nation’s unemployment rate is 11.3%. That’s still much higher than normal for an economy soon to enter its sixth year of expansion, underscoring the agonizingly slow pace of the recovery since the end of the Great Recession.

Many in Washington are euphoric about the improving economy, but the CEO of Gallup, Inc, Jim Clifton a research-based, global performance-management consulting company had other ideas.

His premise is that the report by the Labor Department is highly misleading and fails to capture the true unemployment picture in America.

Some of the examples Clifton cites is that say you’re an out-of-work engineer or healthcare worker or construction worker or retail manager: If you perform a minimum of one hour of work in a week and are paid at least $20 — maybe someone pays you to mow their lawn — you’re not officially counted as unemployed in the much-reported 5.6%. Few Americans know this.

Clifton continues, yet another figure of importance that doesn’t get much press: those working part time but wanting full-time work. If you have a degree in chemistry or math and are working 10 hours part time because it is all you can find — in other words, you are severely underemployed — the government doesn’t count you in the 5.6%. Few Americans know this.

Gallup defines a good job as 30+ hours per week for an organization that provides a regular paycheck. Right now, the U.S. is delivering at a staggeringly low rate of 44%, which is the number of full-time jobs as a percent of the adult population, 18 years and older. We need that to be 50% and a bare minimum of 10 million new, good jobs to replenish America’s middle class.

Clifton ends his argument by saying I hear all the time that “unemployment is greatly reduced, but the people aren’t feeling it.” When the media, talking heads, the White House and Wall Street start reporting the truth — the percent of Americans in good jobs; jobs that are full time and real — then we will quit wondering why Americans aren’t “feeling” something that doesn’t remotely reflect the reality in their lives. And we will also quit wondering what hollowed out the middle class.

The comments by Clifton need to be investigated to truly see how the Labor Department calculates the true unemployment picture in America and only then will we have full transparency

For those struggling to find well-paying jobs the euphoria over the improving is falling on deaf ears.  The mood of the country will begin to improve when they see their economic and those of their families begin to rebound and only then will the confidence of the public begin to brighten.