Favorite chart of the day.

This is very interesting.  Via Paul Krugman's blog, a BLS study of the demographics of unemployment insurance recipients.  While Krugman's blog is about the disconnect between GOP agenda and its largest voting bloc (White Americans), I spotted something else altogether worth paying attention to.

A look at Chart 11 in the study reveals that, 61% of those who received unemployment insurance were White (non-Hispanic) Americans, while just 58% of all unemployed Americans were White (non-Hispanic).  This does not mean that there are more White Americans claiming unemployment insurance than are unemployed.  It means that a lot of Non-White Americans who are unemployed, do not claim unemployment insurance, either because they exhausted their benefits, they weren't qualified to receive benefits, or they chose not to make a claim.

If the data was reversed -- specifically that non-White Americans made up a larger percentage of UI recipients than that of Americans who were unemployed -- you can bet that people would be pointing to this as proof that non-Whites were lazy and / or abusing the social insurance system.  It wouldn't be the proper conclusion, but nonetheless I am quite certain that this would be the narrative that conservative groups would be putting out.

So why is this my favorite chart of the day?  Because it is a non-starter for conservatives looking for proof that they're being jilted by the government.