Quelle Surprise! Unemployment Stats Don't Capture Joblessness

[flashl]

...

The (New York Times) article by Floyd Norris, "Many More Are Jobless Than Are Unemployed," is less than complete. Despite its professed objective of shedding light on how the official unemployment releases understate the extent of inability to find work, the article curiously gives short shrift to explaining how employment data is captured. Nevertheless, it does provide a very useful chart that shows how what the Times calls the jobless rate, which is the proportion of the population without jobs, versus with the published unemployment rate:



In the top chart, it's not hard to see that the gap between the two lines. Not only did has it widened since 1982, but the unemployment rate trends broadly downward while the jobless rate rises. Yet the MSM has chosen to ignore how headline unemployment paints a flattering picture of the labor market until consumer disillusionment with the economy has become acute.

From the New York Times:

The unemployment rate is low. The jobless rate is high....

In the latest report, for March, the Labor Department reported the jobless rate — also called the “not employed rate” by some — at 13.1 percent for men in the prime age group. Only once during a post-World War II recession did the rate ever get that high. It hit 13.3 percent in June 1982, the 12th month of the brutal 1981-82 recession, and continued to rise from there...

...

The negative trend can also be seen in the other chart, which shows the annual change in the number of working men in the 25 to 54 age range, using a three-month moving average to smooth the figures.

In the last half-century, that figure has turned negative only after recessions have been going on for at least a few months, although it has often stayed negative well after the recession officially ended. The lags have ranged from four months after the start of the 1960-61 and 2001 recessions, to 15 months after the beginning of the 1973-75 downturn, with an average lag of eight months. This year, the figure turned negative in January.

[rocktivity]

1. In college, I was taught to automatically triple the "official" unemployment rate

in order to include the underemployed, temps and part-timers who desire full time work, people trying to land their first job, and people who have fallen off the unemployment rolls or have given up looking for work. The upper chart bears this out--and it only deals with men!

:headbang:
rocknation

[Snarkoleptic]

2. Another huge issue is underemployment.

A great many people who formerly had great jobs/careers are now working in much lower paying jobs.
Many have taken low-paying jobs because their Unemployment Compensation benefits ran out after just 6-months.
Another stong motivator is maintaining health insurance, if your coverage lapses, pre-existing conditions are usually excluded when you seek new coverage.

[snot]

3. k&r'd.

[gateley]

4. NC has no Unemployment Benefits Extension.

I was told it was determined by the Fed government which states could offer extensions. NC's unemployment rate, was too "low" to qualify.

The figures they quote have never accurately represented the number of unemployed accurately (let alone underemployed). I always wondered why the media was willing to just pass on those stats without qualifying the info.

[cutlassmama]

5. The BA has never

reported the "REAL" numbers on anything...just like the deaths in Iraq...they simply aren't counted or are under-counted. Not surprising at all.

[many a good man]

6. Ackkkk! That means we have more joblessness than Europe!

Horrors! We mustn't tell the people. They may demand social democracy!!

[lostnotforgotten]

7. There Are 6 Unemployment Rates Q1 Through Q6 - Go Look It Up

eom

[amlevitan]

8. Numbers should be counted as the same!

They still mean the same right?
check out www.freewebs.com/workerssurvival2008 to find out how people are working on getting the bills for extensions passed.

[New Dawn]

9. Thank you for posting that.