Sometimes comedy routines unintentionally hit on real life issues. Take for instance late-night comedian Jay Leno’s monologue Monday about the recent drop in the nation’s unemployment rate:

JAY LENO: Well, according to the Labor Department, unemployment fell from 8.3 to 8.1 percent last month. But that was because only, that’s because, rather, 368,000 Americans gave up looking for work. And today, President Obama said that’s a step in the right direction, and he is encouraging more Americans to give up looking for work so the numbers will come down a little bit.

Newsbusters’ Noel Sheppard notes how the joke would be funny… that is, if it didn’t “hit so close to home.”

In reality, most of the drop in the unemployment rate since its 2009 peak is due to a decline in the labor force.

In fact, according to Zero Hedge, the real unemployment rate is currently 11.7 percent.

As such, if the media did a better job reporting the truth about the jobs numbers, one quite imagines Obama wouldn’t be doing nearly as well in the polls.

And in a pure coincidence, there’s also this: