That’s the headline. In fact, if the government still figured that statistic as it did before the manipulations of Reagan and Clinton, it would be more than 16%, as economist John Williams shows. All government economic statistics have serious theoretical problems, but as Murray Rothbard pointed out, the trend can tell us something, but only if the method remains the same. Government finagles with the method to try to hide its crimes of monetary depreciation and the resulting unemplyment-producing business cycle.