The REAL Unemployment Numbers(?)

[chiburb]

PAUL SOLMAN: When the government adds the white-collar unemployed to out-of-work urban youth, plus the manufacturing workers who've borne the brunt of the recession and jobless recovery, it comes up with an average official unemployment rate of 6.4 percent, highest in a decade, and more than 50 percent higher than it was just two years ago. Now, there is a positive way to look at it. Today's 6.4 percent is nowhere near the post-depression record of 10.8 percent, set back in the recession of 1982. Chicago-based John Challenger, however, in the outplacement business since the early '80s, says unemployment is much worse than the official number suggests.

JOHN CHALLENGER: 6.4 percent only tells the first part of the story. There are discouraged workers. There are people who have been marginalized, and that puts unemployment up over 12 percent.

PAUL SOLMAN: 12 percent?

JOHN CHALLENGER: They're being pushed out of the workplace. They're being deskilled. The problem is much deeper than it looks.

PAUL SOLMAN: John Challenger's extreme claim, first made to us on the phone, is what motivated this story, and what we came to Chicago to explore: That today's unofficial unemployment rate is much higher than the official 6.4 percent. And in fact, what we found suggests that for men in the workforce, today's number actually rivals the 10.8 percent record of 1982, because, it turns out, there are four factors suppressing today's official number, at least for men: Millions more discouraged workers than there were in 1982; millions more on disability; nearly 1.5 million more incarcerated men; and finally, there's a demographic factor. Today's is an older workforce. To make it comparable to 1982, the economists we spoke with would adjust today's number upward for that reason alone. And the same is true for each of these categories. Take discouraged workers, who aren't officially counted as unemployed unless they say they actively looked for work in the past four weeks.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/economy/july-dec03/unemployment_07-29.html

[On the Road]

1. Great Interview

I heard most of it Wed evening, and read the first part from your list. Thanks for posting.