Unemployment Is Down, So What’s the Problem?

[marmar]

from Dollars & Sense:


Unemployment Is Down, So What’s the Problem?
By Alejandro Reuss | May/June 2013


The “headline” unemployment rate, or U-3 by its Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) designation, has declined from a peak of 10.0% in late 2009 to 7.5% now. The unemployment rate—the number of unemployed people as a percentage of the labor force (the employed plus unemployed)—is still abnormally high. Before the onset of the current crisis, it had been this high for only five months (May-September 1992) in the last 24 years.
Unemployment Rate, 2005-2013

The jobs situation now is certainly drastically different from 2008-2010, when unemployment was increasing dramatically—there’s no argument about that. At the bleakest point of the recession, in each of two consecutive months (January-February 2009), over half a million more people went from being employed to unemployed than from unemployed to employed. In March 2013, in contrast, over 250,000 more people went from being unemployed to employed than the reverse. But the end of the employment freefall is hardly the same thing as a robust recovery.
Employment-Population Ratio, 2005-2013



The trend in the employment-to-population ratio—a much less familiar indicator than the headline unemployment rate—tells a different tale. This figure is the number of employed individuals as a percentage of the working-age civilian noninstitutional population. The civilian noninstitutional population excludes military personnel, people in prison, and so on. Working age, meanwhile, is defined as 16 years and over. So there are two big differences between this measure and the unemployment rate. First, the numerator is employment rather than unemployment (so it's looking at the other side of the employment coin). Second, the denominator is not the labor force (the employed plus the unemployed), but the civilian noninstitutional population (which also includes people who are not in the labor force, or NLF). Here, we see not an employment situation that has turned decisively toward recovery, but that has flatlined for more than three years.

Employed, Unemployed, or Neither

How can the unemployment rate have gone steadily down for about three years with hardly a budge to the employment-population ratio? Shouldn’t the two move in opposite directions? To get a handle on this, we have to look at the way the “headline” unemployment rate is calculated, starting with the official government definition of unemployment. .......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2013/0513reuss.html

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. we can be grateful that we are not Greece.

60% unemployment among their youth?

[LiberalEsto]

2. But the jobs are mostly McJobs, and certain populations aren't being hired

African-Americans have a far higher unemployment rate. People 50 and older also struggle to find jobs, and anyone who has been out of work for more than a year is pretty much screwed.

[NV Whino]

3. It hasn't tricked down to my yet.

[FogerRox]

4. Part time workers went up, full time went down

Add it up, un(der)employed is about 26 million. U6 went up was 13.8% now 13.9%, thats nearly 22 million right there.