Saturday, January 10, 2009

Unemployment Rates

Other folks are starting to understand that the government's official unemployment rate is far too rosy a statistic. I've written about this before.

The U-3 rate, the official rate, is 7.2%. The total under/unemployment rate, the U-6 rate, is 13.5%. (Table here). The prognosis for 2009 is pretty bleak.

I suspect that we are, by far, not the only country where the government likes to play statistical games to exclude people not working in the official count.

4 comments:

  1. EBM,

    While reading another like story, I ran across a comment I hadn't thought about.

    How many jobs held by illegals have been lost ? I know the house construction industry down here has just about folded up.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Look for that number to jump even if they try to massage the numbers.
    After the Shit for business Christmas, the long expected rate of bankruptcies is going to inflate the rolls of unemployed, like BushCo gives a rat fuck.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Don, as far as I know, nobody is counting the unemployment rate about illegal workers.

    Busted, it is beyond dispute that Bush does not give a fuck about working people. Neither, for that matter, does anyone in the party of Hoover.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for pointing this out. I was trying to find this information a while ago. Now I know what they call it. I guess my predictions were too optimistic about unemployment.

    ReplyDelete

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