How can there be only 10-million unemployed when a million people a week are filing for UI?

[stopbush]

What and who does that 10-million number represent?

What is the real number? Anyone know?

[Bayard]

1. Good question

[Mike 03]

2. I want to know too.

Does that number include people who have "given up looking"?

Just yesterday in our local paper it says unemployment in my county is almost 8%, and slightly lower for the state overall.

[roamer65]

3. Go check out the U6 unemployment rate.

That will answer your question.

That’s the real rate.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

11.7 pct in Dec 2020.

[Laelth]

11. +1 n/t

-Laelth

[LiberalArkie]

4. Rounding errors?

[unblock]

5. Millions aren't looking for work, so they don't count.

That's how millions more people are collecting unemployment benefits while not considered "unemployed"

[Cicada]

6. The definition of unemployed doesn't fit pandemics

If you are not looking for a job, because being a waitress might kill you, you are not unemployed. You are just taking a vacation. Or if you must take care of kids at work.

[Laelth]

7. The "official numbers" are INDICATORS--nothing more.

As I understand it, the “official number” counts only those presently receiving benefits and actively searching for work. It doesn’t even come close to accounting for the actual number of people who are unemployed. Once benefits run out, you’re no longer counted as unemployed, regardless of whether or not you actually have a job.



-Laelth

[stopbush]

9. I am on UI in CA, where we are currently told that we do not need to look for work

during the pandemic.

In normal times, you would need to occasionally report three attempts a week to find a job.

Which is to say, I don’t see how they’d stop counting us as being unemployed for not looking for work when the State is telling us not to bother looking.

[Laelth]

12. If you're getting benefits, you count as unemployed--always.

Once benefits expire, you will no longer count in U1, U2, or U3 (and U3 is the standard, most-often cited rate).

More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_in_the_United_States

-Laelth

[Jersey Devil]

8. Because once you stop collecting you don't count

It is as though those persons have ceased to exist

[kurtcagle]

10. There is also the possibility that

like everything that came out of the Trump administration, the numbers were deliberately cooked by senior BLS staffers. There's been a weird accounting trick where, early on, about 3 million people who were furloughed were counted as being "on vacation". I do not know whether that was ever rectified, but I'd question the accuracy of the BLS until Biden has a chance to clean house there. As a guess, the real number is probably around 13.5 to 14.5 million, with underemployed likely in the 20 million+ range.

[CaptainTruth]

13. When I looked into this years ago...

...I discovered that the government's official unemployed number is actually the number of people currently collecting unemployment.

There could be millions more whose unemployment has run out & they still don't have a job, but they're not included in that number.

[chowder66]

14. Also some people who were receiving benefits are finding jobs while others lose theirs.

This is In addition to other responses here.

[stopbush]

15. Nicolle just said the number is 16-million.