Saturday, September 04, 2010

The Real Unemployment Number: 16.7 Percent

I have often mentioned that the official unemployment rate was always missing a large portion of the picture, the marginally attached workers who are people who are not working or actively looking for work but claim they want a job.

The 9.6 figure does not include them and the Employment Situation Summary from the Buraeu of Labor Statistics highlights this in every release.

September 3, 2010 release, which makes note that the unemployment figure rose to 9.6 percent, also states in the 7th and 8th paragraphs:

About 2.4 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in August, little changed from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.)

Among the marginally attached, there were 1.1 million discouraged workers in August, an increase of 352,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not season ally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.3 million persons marginally attached to the labor force had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities.


Adding those "marginally attached workers" into the unemployment number brings the figure up to 16.7 percent.

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