Jobless rate soared to 14.7% in April as U.S. shed 20.5 million jobs amid coronavirus pandemic

[progree]

39. Here's the graph of the U-6 unemployment rate -- the broadest measure that BLS produces

Last edited Fri May 8, 2020, 03:25 PM - Edit history (4)

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS13327709

It is often called the under-employment rate because it includes part-timers who say they want full-time jobs. Another way that it differs from the official unemployment rate (U-3) is that U-6 counts jobless people who have looked for work in the past 12 months, while U-3 counts those who have looked for work in the past 4 weeks.

Here it is from the beginning of the series in 1994 (these graphs have a way of disappearing in a few hours or days) :


   ^--Edit: DAMN, that sure didn't take long to disappear. I don't know why it does, Grrrr. A few years ago, it used to last the entire month until the next monthly update.

Well, here's one starting at 1995 (strangely, the one started at 1994 didn't show the graph, even at the BLS site, even though it did earlier). Let's see how long this one lasts:



What I'm seeing on the graph is that it spikes up to just a little over 15%, but the table below it says 22.8% in April 2020. Anyway well over what it was at the Great Recession peak ( 17.2% ).

The low point, 6.7% in December 2019, is also the low point for the series ( in April 2000 it bottomed out at 6.9%, the other time period when it was almost that low )