Real US unemployment rate at 16 pct: Fed official

[Purveyor]

The real US unemployment rate is 16 percent if persons who have dropped out of the labor pool and those working less than they would like are counted, a Federal Reserve official said Wednesday. "If one considers the people who would like a job but have stopped looking -- so-called discouraged workers -- and those who are working fewer hours than they want, the unemployment rate would move from the official 9.4 percent to 16 percent, said Atlanta Fed chief Dennis Lockhart. He underscored that he was expressing his own views, which did "do not necessarily reflect those of my colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee," the policy-setting body of the central bank.

Lockhart pointed out in a speech to a chamber of commerce in Chattanooga, Tennessee that those two categories of people are not taken into account in the Labor Department's monthly report on the unemployment rate. The official July jobless rate was 9.4 percent.

Lockhart, who heads the Atlanta, Georgia, division of the Fed, is the first central bank official to acknowledge the depth of unemployment amid the worst US recession since the Great Depression.

Lockhart said the US economy was improving but "still fragile," and the beginning stages of a sluggish recovery were underway.

"My forecast for a slow recovery implies a protracted period of high unemployment," he said, adding that it would be difficult to stimulate jobs through additional public spending.

"Further fiscal stimulus has been mentioned, but the full effects of the first stimulus package are not yet clear, and the concern over adding to the federal deficit and the resulting national debt is warranted," he said.

More...

AFP: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090826/ts_alt_afp/useconomyrecessionunemploymentbank

[SemiCharmedQuark]

1. Sorry Breitbart. You do not get to measure unemployment one way for Bush and Reagan and another way

for Obama, much as you would like to.

[redqueen]

3. Yep... isn't it funny how they suddenly get all open about this stuff

when the Dems are in charge?

[SemiCharmedQuark]

5. Breitbart is down there with Drudge. WTF anyone links to him is beyond me.

[redqueen]

6. I sure don't see a need for it.

:shrug:

[Purveyor]

8. Well fine then. I edited the link to take all to Yahoo News for this AFP aritcle so now you can

quit your fucking whining.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

2. U6

Unemployment, by this standard, probably hasn't been in single digits for decades.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

4. You knew the conservatives would try to do that though.

All of a sudden they care about real unemployment.

[scheming daemons]

7. Only matters if you are going to use the "real" numbers when looking at Bush's term....

...and all past terms.


You have to use the same numbers all the time, or they mean nothing.

[theothersnippywshrub]

9. During the Reagan recession U6 would have been over 25%.

. . .

Not only is the unemployment rate set to rise significantly heading into <2009>, we are either already at or close to setting records for the number of workers working part time not by choice as employment conditions erode rapidly. Those who are working part time for economic reasons jumped to 6.70 million last month, close to the 6.86 million record in 1982. Those who are working part time due to slack business conditions reached a new record of 4.73 million. While these numbers are alarming, they are absolute numbers and don’t take into account a growing work force. Taking the absolute numbers of workers working part time as a percent of total employment shows an alarming trend, though still below record levels seen over the past half century.





Summing up the three categories to measure the total number of part time workers shows that we are nearing the all-time high of 13.3 million people working part time because there are not full employment opportunities available. On a relative basis as a percentage of total employment, we are still significantly below the peak of 15.2% set in 1982.

. . .

http://www.financialsense.com/Market/cpuplava/2008/1126.html (emphasis added)

U3 during the Reagan recession reached over 10%. That figure plus the 15.2% part time figure plus the discouraged workers percentage would equal the U6 figure.