According to the United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Situation Summary, the official unemployment rate is 8.3, while the U6, which is the total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, has risen again to 15.0 percent.
CNBC explains that despite the seemingly good news of 163,000 news jobs created, that is offset by the same the report's household survey which showed the actual amount of Americans working dropped by 195,000, with the net job gain resulting primarily from seasonal adjustments in the establishment survey. Furthermore 150,000 workers left the workforce.
CNBC delves more into the individual state's U6 "real unemployment" numbers:
The numbers in some cases are startling.
Consider: Nevada's U-6 rate is 22.1 percent, up from just 7.6 percent in 2007. Economically troubled California has a 20.3 percent real rate, while Rhode Island is at 18.3 percent, more than double its 8.3 percent rate in 2007.Those numbers compare especially unfavorably to the national rate, high in itself at 14.9 percent though off its record peak of 17.2 percent in October 2009.Only three states — Nebraska (9.1 percent), South Dakota (8.6 percent) and North Dakota (6.1 percent) — have U-6 rates under 10 percent, according to research from RBC Capital Markets.
Election battleground states paint a picture not much more flattering. Florida's U-6 number is an ugly 17 percent, though Pennsylvania and Ohio are both around 14 percent, below the national U-6 average.
Business Insider provides the chart comparing this recovery to every other recovery from recession since 1948 and calls it the scariest chart ever.
It's put together every monthly by Bill McBride at Calculated Risk, and it shows the trajectory of job losses in all of the various post-WWII recessions. This current recession (and recovery) is the bright red line.
As you can see, the downtrend was far worse than anything else we'd seen since WWII, and the rise is far more meager than anything else we had seen.
Barack Obama will tout the 163,000 jobs created, but no one will hear a word from him about 150,000 workers that left the workforce or the drop of 195,000 of actual amount of Americans working
Bottom line is that all three of those numbers will generally be overtaken by the fact that official unemployment rose again to 8.3 percent, making this the 42nd straight month that unemployment it has been over 8 percent, and that real unemployment, the U6 is back up to 15.0 percent.
Areas still at or above 8 percent unemployment:
Arizona- 8.2%
California- 10.7%
Colorado- 8.2%
Connecticut- 8.1%
D.C.- 9.1%
Florida- 8.6%
Georgia- 9.0%
Illinois- 8.7%
Indiana- 8.0%
Kentucky- 8.2%
Michigan- 8.6%
Mississippi- 8.8%
Nevada- 11.6%
New Jersey- 9.6%
New York - 8.9%
North Carolina- 9.4%
Oregon- 8.5%
Rhode Island- 10.9%
South Carolina- 9.4%
Tennessee- 8.1%
Washington- 8.3%
Data obtained from Bureau of Labor Statistics on the Local Area Unemployment Statistics page. (Right side)
[Update] Fudging? Zero Hedge explains:
Happy by the headline establishment survey print of 133,245 which says that the US "added" 163,000 jobs in July from 133,082 last month? Consider this: the number was based on a non seasonally adjusted July number of 132,868. This was a 1.248 million drop from the June print. So how did the smoothing work out to make a real plunge into an "adjusted" rise? Simple: the BLS "added" 377K jobs for seasonal purposes. This was the largest seasonal addition in the past decade for a July NFP print in the past decade, possibly ever, as the first chart below shows. But wait, there's more: the Birth Death adjustment, which adds to the NSA Print to get to the final number, was +52k. How does this compare to July 2011? It is about 1000% higher: the last B/D adjustment was a tiny +5K! In other words, of the 163,000 jobs "added", 429,000 was based on purely statistical fudging. Doesn't matter - the flashing red headline is good enough for the algos.
Go... look at the charts for yourself.