The official unemployment rate is 7.6%. However, if you start counting all the people who want a job but gave up, all the people with part-time jobs that want a full-time job, all the people who dropped off the unemployment rolls because their unemployment benefits ran out, etc., you get a closer picture of what the unemployment rate is. That number is in the last row labeled U-6.
U-6 is much higher at 14.3% [and note that month over month U-6 ROSE from 13.8% to 14.3%]. Both numbers would be way higher still, were it not for millions dropping out of the labor force over the past few years.
Read it all and he also has more on this today. I have emphasized the importance of U-6 as the best gauge of the employment situation over and over and over again–KSH.
Rev. Harmon,
IMHO, your emphasis on U-6 is correct and appropriate. I sincerely believe that the nation is likely in for a very nasty economic collapse before there will be any truly good economic news, and I seriously doubt that the rest of the industrialized world will escape the unpleasantness.
[i]Pax et bonum[/i] ,
Keith Töpfer
I suspect Keith may be right (#1), and I too commend you, Kendall, for persistently making this unpopular point. Although you may feel a bit like Jeremiah, preaching a message that few seem to want to hear, I hope you’ll keep making the important point that the true unemployment/underemployment rate (U-6) is MUCH worse than most people want to contemplate or acknowledge.
David Handy+