As you can see from the chart, the suffering rate (as I refer to it) has increased much more than the unemployment rate over the past year. In my calculation of the suffering rate I include: 1) the unemployed, 2) part-time workers for economic reasons, and 3) those that want a job but have dropped out of the labor force. It is shown as a percentage of the total labor force plus those that want a job but are not included in the labor force.
Next time you read something about the unemployment rate remember that the real employment picture is very different. The actual rate of those unemployed and underemployed is more than double the offical unemployment rate. As of January 2009, offically there were 11.6 million unemployed persons in the U.S. However, using the suffering rate, as calculated above, there were 25.3 million Americans that were unemployed or underemployed in January 2009.
Source: Data from BLS.
- Report A-1. Employment status of the civilian noninstitutional population 16 years and over, 1970 to date
- Report A-7. Employed persons by class of worker and part-time status, seasonally adjusted.
- Report A-38. Persons not in the labor force by desire and availability for work, age, and sex.
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Nice work Matt. I figured the govt stats on unemployment were off ….or were somehow adjusted but never took the time to dig into it. Thanks for posting this. Very eye opening. I suspect the stated inflation rate will show a similar disparity between govt report vs reality.
Comment by John Fontana — March 2, 2009 @ 7:29 am
Thanks for the comment John. You are correct that the government CPI calculations also understate true inflation. Maybe a good future topic.
Comment by admin — March 2, 2009 @ 8:44 am