Unemployment Lies

No matter how you slice it, 6.7% unemployment (the November numbers from the Department of Labor) is a bitter pill, particularly when we all know that this statistic is rising rapidly. Hearing the 533,000 job loss figure for November, the largest single month fall since 1974, only makes this seem worse. But the truth behind the labor statistics should make you cringe.

Our unemployment numbers don’t count folks who are “underemployed.” Part-timers who are looking for full time. Lawyers and engineers working at the checkout stand until their industry starts hiring again. Or people who would love to find a job, but have just plain given up looking in this economy. Want some numbers on some of these folks? From the Department of Labor?

The December 6 New York Times: “The number of people out of the labor force — meaning that they were neither working nor looking for work and that the government did not consider them unemployed — jumped by 637,000 last month... The number of part-time workers who said they wanted full-time work — all counted as fully employed — rose by an additional 621,000… Already, the share of men older than 20 with jobs was at its lowest point last month since 1983, and it’s very close to the low point of the last 60 years. The share of women with jobs is lower than it was eight years ago, which never happened in previous decades.”

The Department of Labor also provides another measure of unemployment – including part-time workers seeking full-time jobs plus anyone who looked for a job within the last 12 months (at least people who are candid in government surveys, by the way). That “alternative measure” reached 12.5% last month – the highest since the Department began keeping this statistic (1994). Just think what that number will be if the projections of 8-9% unemployment from this recession prove correct.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I thought you should know.