The Real Unemployment Rate could be 34%

[pinqy]

Let's go through the real numbers (not seasonally adjusted numbers are used for consistancy, all numbers for Feb 2010 unless otherwise stated):

Population estimate for 2009 was 307,006,550

Adult Civilian Non-Institutional Population: 236,998,000
This is people 16 years old +, not in prison, the military, or in long term mental/health care. In other words, those who have no legal restrictions to entering or leaving a job or changing jobs. Note there is no upper limit because there is no upper limit to working.

Labor Force: 153,194,000 (64.6% of the adult civilian population)
Those available to work...this includes all those who are working or trying to find work (Employed + Unemployed).

Employed: 137,203,000
Worked for at least one hour for pay or 15+ hours in a family business/farm. It really has to be this broad or a lot of error creeps in. I have had jobs while a student where I only worked 3-4 hours a week, but certainly considered myself employed. But this definition can cause the numbers to be misleading...I was in talks with Mexican government representatives on this issue, and since there is no unemployment insurance in most of the country, people are forced to take any work ad hoc. This happens enough there (as opposed to the US) so that the number doesn't reflect the true situation. But there's no real way to correct for it.

Employed Full Time (>=35 hrs/week): 109,289,000

Employed Part Time (< 35 hrs/week): 27,994,000

Part Time for Economic Reasons: 8,960,000

Involuntary Part Time due to slack work or business conditions: 6,708,000
Involuntary Part Time due to inability to find full time work: 2,252,000​

Part Time for Non-Economic Reasons: 18,718,000
By choice, family circumstances, school, etc.​

Multiple Job-holders: 7,161,000Primary job full time, secondary job part time: 3,735,000

Primary and secondary jobs both part time: 1,842,000
Primary and secondary jobs both full time: 290,000
Hours vary on primary or secondary job: 1,271,000​

Unemployed: 15,991,000
Did not work, and actively looked for work in the previous 4 weeks. The most objective way to determine if someone wants a job is to see what they&#8217;re doing about it. If you&#8217;re not looking, you&#8217;re not available for work and not part of the labor supply.

Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs: 10,664,000

Temporary layoff: 2,100,000
Permanent layoff: 8,564​

Job leavers: 874,000
Reentrants: 3,449,000
New Entrants: 1,005,000​

So the Unemployment Rate is Unemployed/(Employed + Unemployed) which gives us 10.4 for the not seasonally adjusted figures. That's down from January's 10.6. There are trends of spikes and valleys at certain times of year that distort the actual trend (like tidal flows when measuring ocean levels) that are smoothed out by seasonal adjustment. Sometimes the adjusted numbers are higher, sometimes lower...regardless, it puts it into a smoother curve.

Not in the Labor Force: 83,804,000
Didn&#8217;t work and not looking for work.

Want a job: 6,086,000

Marginally Attached: 2,527,000​

Looked for work in the previous 12 months, wants to and available to work, not currently looking.

Discouraged: 1,204,000
Looked for work in the previous 12 months, wants to and available to work, not currently looking because they don&#8217;t believe they&#8217;ll find work.​

 

[Toro]

Great!

So would that mean that the unemployment rate in 2007 wasn't 5%, but something closer to 29%?

It's all relative.

Or maybe we have been in The Great Depression 2.0 for the entire decade...

 

[bugs]

Great!

So would that mean that the unemployment rate in 2007 wasn't 5%, but something closer to 29%?

It's all relative.

Or maybe we have been in The Great Depression 2.0 for the entire decade...

The GREAT Recession.. The SUPER Recession.. Whatever You Want To Call it.. It is BAD!

 

[uscitizen]

What would you recommend at this point, to make the unemployment situation better, to get people back to work?

They should not have bailed anyone out. They should have let the system crash. The bailed out banks still do not lend to anyone but the US government & the bailed out homeowners are still re-defaulting. Japan tried this 20 years ago & they are still screwed.

Right now people can not make investment decisions or long term plans because we do not know which contracts will be honored or what snap decision the government will make next to destroy your investment or business model.

A swift & deep correction was needed to flush out all the bad debt & over leveraged scam artists. That way everyone would know the actual value of things, who they could trust & where everyone stood. We would not be hanging on every Washington back & forth decision. We would be already recovered out of this fog.

We are now stuck in the Japan Fog of endless prolonged misery & stagflation is rearing it's ugly head.

More the reason to get the re-regulation in place now so the investors and such know where they stand and can begin exploiting the loopholes that lobbyists got placed in the regulations.

 

[Douger]

Great!

So would that mean that the unemployment rate in 2007 wasn't 5%, but something closer to 29%?

It's all relative.

Or maybe we have been in The Great Depression 2.0 for the entire decade...

NONSENSE.
It goes from GD2 to GD3 to WW3.
Just the way they planned it.

 

[The Rabbi]

They should not have bailed anyone out. They should have let the system crash. The bailed out banks still do not lend to anyone but the US government & the bailed out homeowners are still re-defaulting. Japan tried this 20 years ago & they are still screwed.

Right now people can not make investment decisions or long term plans because we do not know which contracts will be honored or what snap decision the government will make next to destroy your investment or business model.

A swift & deep correction was needed to flush out all the bad debt & over leveraged scam artists. That way everyone would know the actual value of things, who they could trust & where everyone stood. We would not be hanging on every Washington back & forth decision. We would be already recovered out of this fog.

We are now stuck in the Japan Fog of endless prolonged misery & stagflation is rearing it's ugly head.

Yup.
The major problem is the uncertainty this administration has cast over everything. What will it cost to hire people? Unknown. Will we be able to enforce this contract? Unknown. What regulation will we have to contend with? Unknown.
With so many unknowns it is no wonder employers wont hire.

It's not the UNKNOWNS that are the problem, I think.

Its the KNOWNS that give us pause.

We KNOW god damned well that the economy is in the crapper, that unemployment is dampening the consumer economy, and that the vicious cycle of depression has a while to go even under the happiest projections.

You want to blame Obama as though if somebody else had been elected we wouldn't be in the same boat.

That is, I think, a rather foolishly optomistic theory.

I'm not trying to defend Obama, here, I'm just trying to point out that the problem is bigger than anything any POTUS can solve.

OK then you've missed my point.
It is the unknowns. CEO after CEO (I beleive Nucor is in there too) has mentioned this as a reason why they aren't hiring.
It is Obama's fault and no one else's. Even when the economy is poor companies plan for the upturn. Not the case now.

 

[Neubarth]

...We KNOW god damned well that the economy is in the crapper, that unemployment is dampening the consumer economy, and that the vicious cycle of depression has a while to go even under the happiest projections.

You want to blame Obama as though if somebody else had been elected we wouldn't be in the same boat.....

....
It is Obama's fault and no one else's. Even when the economy is poor companies plan for the upturn. Not the case now.

Obama inherited the mess, but he is far enough in that he has no excuse for not making substantive effort to correct the mess. There are a few thousand bankers who need to be put before firing squads. They are hideously corrupt and need to be punished for their crimes. Unfortunately, that will probably never happen. Meanwhile there has been no effective restraint of the corrupt Big Bank policies. Obama is an obvious Do Nothing President when it comes to eliminating corruption in government and in banking.

I wrote to him over a year ago that an honest project to put hundreds of thousands of people to work (and one that would be good for the whole nation) would be to divert excess Midwest runoff water to massive holding lakes in the west to make it possible to use all of the millions of acres of farmland that have gone fallow in states like California and Arizona. One of our biggest revenue generators in international trade is our produce from the farms of America. Recent federal policy has been damaging to American Farm production and we need to put a stop to that.

Obama has refused to respond.

Why? Because he is a do nothing President on issues like that, too. And I thought Carter was the greatest fuggup as a president that I had ever seen (I voted for him the first time. Shame on me.). Well, Obama now owns that title.

 

[KissMy]

By the government slowing the debt correction & dragging the recession out as they have, they turned it into a depression. That changed the unemployment from a lagging indicator into a leading indicator. Now high unemployment is depressing economic activity which increases unemployment. It is now a self re-enforcing feedback loop. We will go broke trying to spend our way out of this.

The extended unemployment payments have caused most states to drastically increase the unemployment insurance premium charged to employers for each employee. This has caused employers to lay off even more employees also creating another self re-enforcing feedback loop.

The picking of winners & losers companies has destroyed small business (the largest source of employment this country has) & discouraged investment. Oh yes boys girls, we are in for a long Japan style stagflation depression.

 

[Neubarth]

Great!

So would that mean that the unemployment rate in 2007 wasn't 5%, but something closer to 29%?

It's all relative.

Or maybe we have been in The Great Depression 2.0 for the entire decade...

Ironically there are economists who say that will be the eventual determination, that The Greatest Depression started in 2001, right after the second tower fell. Osama predicted that the United States was so corrupt internally that a blow at the financial symbol that was most recognized around the world would cause the financial collapse of the US. It is beginning to look like he was correct. He started the ball rolling with his attack on 9/11, but our own greed and corruption has certainly contributed.

 

[KissMy]

Or maybe we have been in The Great Depression 2.0 for the entire decade...

Ironically there are economists who say that will be the eventual determination, that The Greatest Depression started in 2001, right after the second tower fell. Osama predicted that the United States was so corrupt internally that a blow at the financial symbol that was most recognized around the world would cause the financial collapse of the US. It is beginning to look like he was correct. He started the ball rolling with his attack on 9/11, but our own greed and corruption has certainly contributed.

Actually according to the Dow vs Gold chart we have been in a depression since 1998 tech bubble. We are 12 years into a 20+ year Japan style depression. It is a "Cascading Market Crash" propped up by inflation & malinvestment.

 

[sparky]

heh!, maybe Osama should have just laid back and let us drown in our own greed, then he wouldn't be endlessly draggin' that dialysis machine around Afghan now.....

 

[Neubarth]

heh!, maybe Osama should have just laid back and let us drown in our own greed, then he wouldn't be endlessly draggin' that dialysis machine around Afghan now.....

He is not on dialysis. That was a false rumor. I met with Osama on three different occasions. At no time was there any indication that he was on dialysis.

 

[sparky]

well that probably makes you a scary man Neubarth.

but i'm ok with that.....

so, any opinion on government created <WPO or similar> jobs? I know it's levitating one's self by one's bootstraps, but short term effects might , in this economuc sh*storm, be a bit of a jumpstart?

 

[skookerasbil]

It's too high. We can all agree on that.

The WSJ (maybe it was Heritage.org) had an interesting take. During the 2001 recession we actually experienced MORE job losses than during this recession. Yet the unemployment rate didnt go much above 5%. Why?
Because employers were still creating jobs in the recession, enough to almost offset the losses.
This time around employers are not creating jobs because of the political uncertainty. No one knows what it will cost to hire people or run a business. This adminstration is directly responsible for that, proposing vast new regulations and then leaving them up in the air.
All this will end after November when the GOP retakes Congress and stymies whatever is left of Obama's proposals.

brilliant post bro...................

 

[KissMy]