Efforts by the Obama administration to dress up the employment picture are a bit like attempting to stuff a circus elephant into a ballerina costume. As Washington trumpets last month’s drop in the unemployment rate (6.3 percent), it has quietly moved more than 988,000 Americans into the “not participating in the labor force” column.

If you add the current number of Americans without a job (9.75 million) to the number of US citizens not in the labor force (92.02), you come up with 101.77 million working age Americans who do not have work, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Now compare that figure to April 2000, when 5.48 million Americans were unemployed and 69.27 million Americans were not participating in the labor market. The number of Americans 14 years ago without work was 74.75 million. That means that the number of working age Americans without a job has risen by 27 million since the year 2000. However Washington wishes to fudge data that is bad news for the Obama administration.

In January 2005, the month that Barack Obama was sworn in as president, the United States was struggling with its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Just 60.6 percent of all working age Americans enjoyed employment of some kind.

Since just 58.9 percent of all working age Americans presently have employment, the US job picture remains in worse condition than it was when Barack Obama entered office.

Michael Snyder, who contributes to The Economic Collapse blog, suggested that the United States “just define every American that is not working as ‘not in the labor force’ and then we can have ‘0.0 percent unemployment.’”

“Then we can all have a giant party and celebrate how wonderful the US economy is.”

The unemployment data comes on the heels of another report, released last week, that 20 percent of all American families in 2013 do not have a single member that is working, according to BLS.

The BLS defines a family as “a group of two or more people who live together and who are related by birth, adoption or marriage.”

In 2013, of the estimated 80,445,000 families in the United States, in 20 percent – or 16,127,000— of them none of the members was employed.

Here's something that many Americans -- including some of the smartest and most educated among us -- don't know: The official unemployment rate, as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, is extremely misleading.

Right now, we're hearing much celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street about how unemployment is "down" to 5.6%. The cheerleading for this number is deafening. The media loves a comeback story, the White House wants to score political points and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market.

None of them will tell you this: If you, a family member or anyone is unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a job -- if you are so hopelessly out of work that you've stopped looking over the past four weeks -- the Department of Labor doesn't count you as unemployed. That's right. While you are as unemployed as one can possibly be, and tragically may never find work again, you are not counted in the figure we see relentlessly in the news -- currently 5.6%. Right now, as many as 30 million Americans are either out of work or severely underemployed. Trust me, the vast majority of them aren't throwing parties to toast "falling" unemployment.

There's another reason why the official rate is misleading. 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.

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.

There's no other way to say this. The official unemployment rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed, amounts to a Big Lie.

And it's a lie that has consequences, because the great American dream is to have a good job, and in recent years, America has failed to deliver that dream more than it has at any time in recent memory. A good job is an individual's primary identity, their very self-worth, their dignity -- it establishes the relationship they have with their friends, community and country. When we fail to deliver a good job that fits a citizen's talents, training and experience, we are failing the great American dream.

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.

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.