The really, really bad news about the unemployment rate.

Slate by Daniel Gross | Oct. 23, 2008 (News Analysis)

... maybe the employment data are much worse than they seem. In the past year, the two key measures of employment—the unemployment rate and the payroll jobs figure—have been poor but not awful. The unemployment rate has risen from 4.5 percent a year ago to 6.1 percent. And in the first nine months, 760,000 payroll jobs were lost. This is unwelcome but not catastrophic. So why do things feel so bad? It's not because, as Phil Gramm suggested, we're a ... Full Story »

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Fabrice Florin
3.8
 by Fabrice Florin - Oct. 23, 2008

Very informative report on how the currently low unemployment rate of 6% doesn't include 'discouraged workers' who have given up looking for jobs. According to this report, the real unemployment rate is closer to 10%, and the job situation in the U.S. is a lot worse than it has been at any time since 1994. This excellent report provides extensive factual information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to back its points, and goes further than others in exposing this important discrepancy.

… as the unemployment rate has risen, so too has the portion of the population suffering from other types of work deficits. Three years ago, when the unemployment rate was 5.1 percent, an additional 3.9 percent of the labor force fell into one of those other underutilized categories. Last month, with the unemployment rate at 6.1 percent, an additional 4.9 percent of the labor force was underutilized. (See charts comparing the unemployment rate and the U6 rate.) Add it up, and more than 10 percent of American workers are essentially not contributing full-time to their families’ well-being and to that of the economy at large. The unemployment rate may still be historically low, but the underutilization is historically high.

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