Real Unemployment Rate Now 16.4%

[Orwellian_Ghost]

Real Unemployment Rate Now 16.4%

by Dollars and Sense

We just posted John Miller's article on the real unemployment rate—adjusted to include involuntarily part-time workers and "discouraged" workers. The May numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, using the bureau's expanded "U-6" rate, show an astonishing 16.4% rate of unemployment. As Miller points out, "no bout of unemployment since the last year of the Great Depression in 1941 would have produced an adjusted."

Of course, many groups of workers have already been facing official unemployment rates in the double digits—in some cases even higher than the adjusted rate of 16.4%:

As of May, unemployment rates for black, Hispanic, and teenage workers were already 14.9%, 12.7% and 22.7%, respectively. Workers without a high-school diploma confronted a 15.5% unemployment rate, while the unemployment rate for workers with just a high-school degree was 10.0%. Nearly one in five (19.2%) construction workers were unemployed. In Michigan, the hardest hit state, unemployment was at 12.9% in April. Unemployment rates in seven other states were at double-digit levels as well.

Another measure of how this downturn compares to other post-war recessions: "The current downturn has pushed up unemployment rates by more than any previous postwar recession," from 4.9% at the start of the recession to the current (official) rate of 9.4%—an increase of 4.5 percentage points. The only post-war recession to rival the current one, the 1982 recession, had a peak official unemployment rate of 10.8%. But that was only 3.4 percentage points above the starting rate of 7.4%. And as Miller points out, "topping the 1982 recession's peak rate of 10.8% is now distinctly possible."

http://www.dollarsandsense.org/blog/2009/06/real-unemployment-rate-now-164.html

But consider these numbers:

-The 9.4 percent May unemployment rate is based on 14.5 million Americans out of work. But that number doesn't include discouraged workers, people who gave up looking for work after four weeks. Add those 792,000 people, and the unemployment rate is 9.8 percent.
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-The official rate also doesn't include "marginally attached workers," or people who have looked for work in the past year but stopped searching in the past month because of barriers to employment such as child care, poor health or lack of transportation. Add those 1.4 million people, and the unemployment rate would be 10.6 percent.

-The official rate also doesn't include "involuntary part-time workers," or the 2.2 million people like Noel who took a part-time job because that's all they could get, plus those whose work hours dropped below the full-time level. Once those 9.1 million workers are added to the unemployment mix, the rate would be 16.4 percent.

<snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/05/AR2009060500277.html

[frylock]

1. zoinks!

knr

[Orwellian_Ghost]

2. The Real Unemployment Rate Hits a 68-Year High

Although you have to dig into the statistics to know it, unemployment in the United States is now worse than at any time since the end of the Great Depression.

From December 2007, when the recession began, to May of this year, 6.0 million U.S. workers lost their jobs. The big three U.S. automakers are closing plants and letting white-collar workers go too. Chrysler, the worst off of the three, will lay off one-quarter of its workforce even if it survives. Heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar and giant banking conglomerate Citigroup have both laid off thousands of workers. Alcoa, the aluminum maker, has let workers go. Computer maker Dell and express shipper DHL have both canned many of their workers. Circuit City, the leading electronics retailer, went out of business, costing its 40,000 workers their jobs. Lawyers in large national firms are getting the ax. Even on Sesame Street, workers are losing their jobs.


Source: Table A-1, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Labor Department, www.bls.gov.

The official unemployment rate hit 9.4% in May—already as high as the peak unemployment rates in all but the 1982 recession, the worst since World War II. And topping the 1982 recession’s peak rate of 10.8% is now distinctly possible. The current downturn has pushed up unemployment rates by more than any previous postwar recession (see Table 1).

<snip>

http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2009/0709miller.html

[roamer65]

3. The SGS alternate measurement is at 20.5%.

http://shadowstats.com

John Williams calculates the U6 the way it used to be before it was changed in the 1990's. I tend to believe John more than I do gov't bureaucrats.

[Larry Ogg]

4. Thanks for posting this O_G

I was watching the M$M and they were reporting as to how the unemployment rate and the economy where improving; of course some of us know how fudging numbers sustains the elusive lie. Officially everything is fine in the Land of Oz as long as you’re not affected, but for those who suffer from the truth, it’s completely another story...

K&R

[blindpig]

5. So where are the fucking jobs?

All of that money pissed away to the bankers would better have been spent providing government jobs for millions. People would get relief, homes would be saved, money would flow into the economy as people spent at retailers.

Instead we get trickled on, again.

k&r

[progressoid]

7. Asia. eom

[blindpig]

12. Somewhat true, but not to the point.

When faced with a similar crisis FDR put massive numbers of Americans on the federal payroll. This administration throws the boodle at the banks and then a pittance to the unemployed, which furthermore has to trickle through the private sector.

It is a matter of priorities.

[maryf]

14. A matter of priorities...

wish it were our priorities instead of the corporatists....when we talk about 300,000,000 being valuable, we mean people....

[blindpig]

6. kick n/t

[blindpig]

11. misplaced, disregard, n/t

[progressoid]

8. That article says the U-6 rate is 16.4% but the chart says 13.5%

Is the chart old?

[blindpig]

9. Yeah, a few months old.

makes the same point, or worse.

[DeschutesRiver]

10. Thanks, appreciated seeing it outlined like that:)

Ain't it the truth.

If they used the U6 number, as they should, everyone would be freaking out. The U6 is the only number I follow, at least for the last year or so, once I started asking questions about people no longer on unemployment or the self employed-now unemployed, and got no good answers. Then I researched it and voila, learned about U6, the depression stats, and realized that the U3 number is worthless as a real measure of what we are up against.

[leftstreet]

13. The jobs are coming! 10 million Medical Claims Denial Specialists!

K&R

[maryf]

15. K&R

My brother's $8.00 an hour line cook job just got cut a day, wow, that will save his temp company a whopping 64 bucks a day...really hurts him though...How many more would love to say "fuck you" and walk when given an option like that...just can't afford to...

[Mike 03]

16. This is absolutely true. Barron's posted it a week ago. NT

[MrMickeysMom]

17. We know the jobs are not here (what you'd call jobs) so...

WHERE'D THE FUCKING MONEY GO?