patriot up date - What Is the Real Unemployment Rate?

hvactec

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A closer look at the Department of Labor’s employment report earlier this month reveals that the real unemployment number is different from the “headline” number. Restated, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) should have concluded that unemployment is at least 9.1 percent, and most certainly much higher.

If the BLS adds the 9.3 million who are “involuntarily” employed part time because their hours were cut back or because they couldn’t find a full-time job, that brings the total to 23.3 million un- (or under) employed. Another 2.5 million persons were “marginally attached” to the labor force — those who were not working, but wanted to work and had tried to find work in the past year without success — which brings the total to 25.8 million. According to the BLS, the civilian work force is just over 154 million, so doing the math give a potentially more accurate number: 16.8 percent.

If those who have given up looking for work altogether were counted, that would add more than another nine million, according to John Williams at ShadowStats.com. That brings the unemployment number to 23 percent. This is confirmed by a recent Gallup poll that nearly one in every five Americansdescribe themselves as underemployed but it doesn’t count those who hold more than one job just to make ends meet.

read more What Is the Real Unemployment Rate? – Patriot Update
 
A closer look at the Department of Labor’s employment report earlier this month reveals that the real unemployment number is different from the “headline” number. Restated, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) should have concluded that unemployment is at least 9.1 percent, and most certainly much higher.

If the BLS adds the 9.3 million who are “involuntarily” employed part time because their hours were cut back or because they couldn’t find a full-time job, that brings the total to 23.3 million un- (or under) employed. Another 2.5 million persons were “marginally attached” to the labor force — those who were not working, but wanted to work and had tried to find work in the past year without success — which brings the total to 25.8 million. According to the BLS, the civilian work force is just over 154 million, so doing the math give a potentially more accurate number: 16.8 percent.

If those who have given up looking for work altogether were counted, that would add more than another nine million, according to John Williams at ShadowStats.com. That brings the unemployment number to 23 percent. This is confirmed by a recent Gallup poll that nearly one in every five Americansdescribe themselves as underemployed but it doesn’t count those who hold more than one job just to make ends meet.

read more What Is the Real Unemployment Rate? – Patriot Update

But you need to compare apples to apples. By that I mean that people always feel that they should have a full time job if they want one. So you need to compare it with the underemployment in normal times, say with a 5% unemployment. At this time would it be 10% feel they are underemployed? 15%? I personally have no idea, but I'm pretty certain that with 5% unemployment, you wouldn't have 5% un and underemployment.
 
If the BLS adds the 9.3 million who are “involuntarily” employed part time because their hours were cut back or because they couldn’t find a full-time job, that brings the total to 23.3 million un- (or under) employed.
And why exactly would you include people with jobs in a measure of UNemployment???? Oh, to artificially make the UE rate look worse.


Another 2.5 million persons were “marginally attached” to the labor force — those who were not working, but wanted to work and had tried to find work in the past year without success — which brings the total to 25.8 million. According to the BLS, the civilian work force is just over 154 million, so doing the math give a potentially more accurate number: 16.8 percent.
Wow, let's go back to 4th grade math. When taking a percent of anything, everything in the numerator must also be accounted for in the denominator. Since Marginally Attached are Not in the Labor Force (which is Employed + Unemployed), you can't use just the Labor Force as the denominator; you must add the Marginally Attached to the Denominator as well (Part time for economic reasons are already part of the Labor Force as "employed"). So the U-6 measure of labor underutilization (NOT "UNemployment") is (Unemployed + Marginally Attached + part time for economice reasons)/(Employed + Unemployed + Marginally Attached) = (13,992,000 + 2,511,000 + 9,270,000)/(140,025,000 + 13,992,000 + 2,511,000) = 16.5%

If those who have given up looking for work altogether were counted, that would add more than another nine million, according to John Williams at ShadowStats.com. That brings the unemployment number to 23 percent.
Which is curious, as the number of people saying they "want a job now" was only 6,241,000 and that includes the 2.5 million Marginally Attached. So where's he getting these extra 5 million or so people from? And it's actually more than that. If you do the math properly and add to the numerator AND denominator, Williams is adding 13.3 million more than are in the U-6, and over 10 million more than those who even want a job.

And let's be clear on definitions, too. Marginally Attached are those who are willing and available to work, have looked for work sometime in the last 12 months but are not looking now. Reasons for not looking are they don't believe they'll find work (the discouraged) and any other reason such as child care, elderly care, transportation, illness, injury, jail, institutionalization, school, didn't need a job, etc. Most of the reasons are non-economic.

Now, why are we supposed to take seriously people who don't understand the basic concepts of definitions and don't know how to do basic 4th grade percentages?
 
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