HuffPost's Real Misery Index: Recalculating the Hard Times.

[LongTomH]

The original 'Misery Index' was invented by economist Arthur Okun. It's a formula which adds the yearly increase in the Consumer Price Index to the current unemployment rate. But, according to the Huffington Post:

Unfortunately, it's not a very useful statistic. For starters, the unemployment statistic traditionally used represents only a fraction of the jobless since it doesn't include part-time workers and those who have given up looking for work. Moreover, the consumer price index has been criticized for under-emphasizing essential goods such as food and gas.

Also, the original Misery Index doesn't include a whole host of economic indicators that have a huge impact on the actual well-being of millions of Americans -- factors like the number of people losing their homes, losing their health care, and going bankrupt or defaulting on their credit cards. The rise in the cost of gas is important -- but what does it matter if you don't have a home to heat or a car to drive?

So, after consulting with experts who study economic trends, and receiving suggestions from many of our readers, we have created the Real Misery Index. It combines a more accurate unemployment statistic (the U6 formulation), with the inflation rate for three essentials (food and beverages, gas, medical costs), and year-over-year percent increases in credit card delinquencies, housing prices, food stamp participation, and home equity loan deficiencies.

<snip>

The traditional Misery Index for the current recession is only 8.1, below the index for the 1991 downturn and barely higher than the 2001 dot-com collapse. But the Real Misery Index for 2009 -- at 29.9 -- is almost three times higher than the index for 2001, showing that the
economy is in much worse shape.

Huffpost says this is a work in progress; readers are invited to send in their suggestions for other factors to: [e-mail]

Here's the original article where Arianna Huffington announces the 'Real Misery Index' project: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/keeping-the-spotlight-on_b_228923.html

[Demeter]

1. My Most Important Misery Index

is Temp + Humidity. I think it was 80 and 80 today.