US Jobless Rate Misses 'Hidden' Unemployed

[Nicholas_J]

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Buried inside the official U.S. employment report each month is a little-known figure that gives a much less rosy picture of the labor market than the headlines.

The government agency that produces the data also publishes an alternative measure that tries to capture the hidden unemployed, those who are not included in the official unemployment rate for various statistical reasons.

That broader measure is dramatically higher, at 9.7 percent in May, compared with the official level of 5.6 percent.

That's an extra 5.96 million people, in addition to the 8.2 million "officially" unemployed, who are waiting on the sidelines and may at some point step back into the labor force.

http://rense.com/general53/hisi.htm

Though this article is a little old. One of the issues Democrats musrt focus on is the method by which Republicans claim that theBush economic policy has caused an economic turnaround. REAL figures point to the fact that right now, the number of people who are unemployed who have fallen off of the rolls is at its highest poiint in history, as well a thge fact that the Bush Labor department is also counting people who were looking for full time work but forced to take part time work as FULL TIME, in the current unemployment statistics. Also among these figures are unemployed people who have decided to sell items on E-bay or Amazon.com. Though these people may be earning less that 400 dollars a month, they are also embedded in the full time figures. How can democrats bring thise facts to the forefront iof public attention. Real data places unemployment at close to the levels that existed at the beginning of the great depression, having been hovering around ten percent for the last 4 years. Almost twice the number of people than counted have actually been unemployted for far longer than they are eligible for unemploymeent conensation, making the last four years one of the longest periods of sustained unemploymeny since the depression.

[NVMojo]

1. yeah, like yesterday they announced Nevada's unemployment

is the lowest in 25 years but then they run this story in the same paper on the same day ....hidden unemployment...

Restroom issue a growing concern

For the second time in as many years, homeless people's use of the downtown streets as a toilet has become a problem, drawing to it thousands of dollars in taxpayer money and finger-pointing all around.

more...

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/lv-other/2004/nov/19/517853170.html

[Nicholas_J]

4. Lowballing the real unemploymeny figures places it at around

Ten million, more accurate figures place it at over 15 million.
This actually makes U.S. unemployment a few percent higher than any of the coutries in Western Europe, which REpublicans always use in order to try to indict the Social Democracies of Western Europe as being less effective economies. This is comparing apples and oranges, as the nature of the European unemploymeny system allows all ogf the unemployed to be counted, as they never fall off the rolls for their entire period of unemployment. When the hidden unemployed are actually counted in the U.S. American unemployment is alwys higher than European unemployment. In Europe unemploymeny ranges between 10 and 12 percent on a regular basis. Burt this counts everyone. Als Europeans class all part time workers as part time. The way it is done in the U.S. is that if you are a full time worker, and are looking for work, and take a part time job, you end up being counted as a full time worker re-employed. Oone of the things Democrats must do, and even write their congressmen about doing is to change the methods by which unemployment is counted in order to make sure that a more accurate mewthod of accessing the failure or succes of an administrations economic policies.Our system is simply to easy to fudge. All that was necessary for BUsh to create an artificially low rate of unemployment was to have the Republican majority congress to stop all extensions of unemployment compensation. A better way of doing this is through income tax returns. It would be relatively simple to gauge under employmeny by figuring the percentage of people at working age who had lowered incomes each year. Someone who is in their 40's who has an income tax return that has dropped from a 100,000 gross income to 25,000 would certainly be underemployed. SOmeone who drops from 50,000 to 10,000 could be counted as unemployeed. Then looking at where the income wasearned could be used to separate out those who have been unemployed for a year or multiple years. The W-2 source of income along with a drop in income could easily be used to figure out hom many people are still unemployed, living off savings, ot part time work.

The curent methods favor anyone who ewants to fudsge the figures or who wishes to eliminate large numbers of people from being counted at all. AS the article noted, on top of the 8.9 million poeople currently counted there are at least 2 million people who have moved rom full tme to part time work, and almost seven million who have dropped altogetther from the rolls. This give the U.S. one of the highest rates of unemploymeny of the industrialized western nations.

This makes the U.S, rate of unemployment 20 percent higher than the EEC nation with the next closest unemploymeny rate...Germany with a rate of 12 percent.

One of the best things that Democrats can do between now and the mid term elections is to focus on getting the methods of unemploymet changed to accurate;y reflect the real rates, or to get the GAO tp do an in depth study to get an indication of the actual rate of unemployment, and then watch REpublicans try to fudge those figures to try to prove them wrong, and catch them fudging.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. 9.7 sounds about right to me

There's not as much of an acute problem as there was in 1982 (when Minneapolis-St. Paul had 11% official unemployment, but there's more chronic unemployment than I've ever seen in my 54 years.

[joelogan]

2. IOW, American unemployment is just as high as in Europe

except they have longterm unemployment available for years and welfare to single ablebodied people. Why? because they have a Progressive Taxatiopn system, and we do not. Our wealthy pay 15-20% of their income in total taxes, and so do our working poor!

[Nicholas_J]

5. It isnt all that easy on the unemplyed in Europe

To remain on it indefinately, though it is possible. Retraining efforts are required, such as taking classes in new fields that the government determines you are able to do. Relocations to areas that jobs are available in is also required.It takes a very good reason to not accept relocation. The government pays for relocation, provides additional subsidies for higher costs, and subsidizes both food and rent of the unemployed on top of the unemployment wages. But if they say they have a job for you at the opposite side of the country. you are pretty much expected to move. Not wanting to traumatize the kids by uprooting them is not an option. A very compelling reason for not moving is required and not easy. THe government will also pay the costs of starting a small business, have many options for starting them, will provide a salary while the company is starting up until it makes enough of a profit to provide a living wage, Both Germany and the Netherlands provide this as an option as well, though Netherlands is considering stopping it as this has been less than sucessful in that country. IN Germany it is working well. Inb some cases, the Dutch pay for their citizens to start small businesses in other EEC nations. With the problemsthat have been occuring between the Dutch and Muslim immigrants, fear of increasing violnece has resulyted in a large number of dutch citizens wanting to move from theNetherlands to places like Norway, which still has a relatively small population, and is still rather ethnically un-diverse. A small town in southern Norway has virtually become a Dutch enclave in Norway, with residents creating a little bit of Holland on the Fjord. People start up small businesses to servre their fellow Nederlanders, such as internet cafes. And the government of the Nederalnds d\foots the bills until the business is able to sustain itself and its owner.

Far more practial thatn the U.S. system of simply paying for a few months, expecting you to show up with one job contact a week, and then cutting you off after six months lost to the sywstem and uncounted.

In the current batch of uncounted unemployed it is estimated that more than 70 percent have been unemployed for more than 18 months.
Half have been unemployed for over 3 years. A quarter unemployed for 4 years.

Bush has managed to create the impression of a strong economy by not counting almost half of the total number of unemployed in the U.S. This is the largest number of hidden unemployed in over 60 years.

[Cheswick2.0]

7. see, but now you sound like you want class warfare

and redistribution of wealth. Democrats now believe in voodoo economics.

[MrUnderhill]

9. No it isn't.

While relevant to the conversation... the article cited is not comparing apples to apples. The European countries also have "hidden" unemployment by this standard.

And it isn't even "hidden". All of the figures used to glean this "hidden" figure are "hidden" right there in the same unemployment report the 5.5% figure comes from.

[joelogan]

12. you are wrong

You offer no evidence that european unemployment is higher than our real unemployment.

Also, the bogus 5% figure is the one cited everywhere on tv. Just because it may be derived from some secondary calculation does not erase the fact that our government and the media collude to deceive the public about the real unemployment rate in American, which IS about the same as the real unemployment rate in Western Europe.

[MrUnderhill]

13. Sure I do. These are all standard reporting figures.

Everyone is acting like these are some "secret" numbers.

Economists measure several levels of "unemployment" with standardized measurements that don't actually vary much from country to country. The number you see reported all the time is "U3" unemployment. It's the same figure the europeans use.

Here's an old document that shows what I'm talking about (notice the table on page four and look at the 1993 measurement - "Unemployment" - as normally reported U3 was 5.6%, but - like today - total "hidden" unemployment was over 9%... While in Canada the comparable figures were 9.9% and 14.2%):

http://www.bls.gov/mfp/mprsor95.pdf

The 9.7% figure (actually down to 9.5% since this report was run) is the "U6" figure that includes as unemployed the PhD who settles for a job at WalMart, and the full-time construction worker who can only get 20 hours a week worth of work.

Essentially... U6 measures BOTH unemployment AND underemployment.

Which is FINE. It's information we need to know... and it bears on the condition of the economy... AND it's under-reported. But Europe uses the same standard measurements

[MrUnderhill]

14. Here are the OECD standardized figures.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/41/13/18595359.pdf

[louis-t]

3. Ooooh, but what about the hidden employed?

Cheney sez people are employed because they sell their worldly goods on e-bay to pay their bills. Dudn't that count? Sheeesh!

[MrUnderhill]

10. If I invite an unemplyed friend to help me run my garage sale next weekend

might I get a tax cut for creating a new job?

[Cheswick2.0]

6. Most people have been saying this for three years

too bad no one mentioned it during the campaign.

[MrUnderhill]

11. The reason it wasn't mentioned during the campaign ...

... is that it has always been the case.

When the reported unemployment rate was 10%, there was still an additional "hidden" element that didn't hit that figure.