The ‘Other’ Unemployment Rate Reaches 17.5%
While the MSM focused on the “official” jobless rate today, a broader measure of unemployment in the United States also headed higher in October. Phil Izzo and Sudeep Reddy wrote in the Wall Street Journal’s “Real Time Economics” blog this morning:
The U.S. jobless rate jumped up 0.4 percentage point to 10.2% in October, the highest level since April 1983. The government’s broader measure of unemployment shot up even more, rising half a point to 17.5%.
The comprehensive gauge of labor underutilization, known as the “U-6″ for its data classification by the Labor Department, accounts for people who have stopped looking for work or who can’t find full-time jobs. Its continuing divergence from the official rate (the “U-3″ unemployment measure) indicates the job market has a long way to go before growth in the economy translates into relief for workers…
The U-6 figure includes everyone in the official rate plus “marginally attached workers” — those who are neither working nor looking for work, but say they want a job and have looked for work recently; and people who are employed part-time for economic reasons, meaning they want full-time work but took a part-time schedule instead because that’s all they could find…
Izzo and Reddy noted:
The U-6 rate is now the highest since the Labor Department started this particular data series in 1994.
Source:
“Broader Unemployment Rate Hits 17.5%”
Phil Izzo, Sudeep Reddy
Wall Street Journal (Real Time Economics blog), November 6, 2009
Leave a Reply