What Does Bernanke Know? {The Guy Rate of unemployment - 25% unemployed}

Smart Money ^ | 26 Mar 2012 | BRETT ARENDS

[shove_it]

Arends: Forget the Labor Department's jobs numbers. For a true picture of the bleak employment picture, use the Guy Rate.

~snip~

There are many reasons to distrust the unemployment figures. The most obvious is that those who give up looking for work no longer count among the official "unemployment." (Extraordinary, but true.)

But we know Ben Bernanke looks at the raw data.

What is he seeing?

~snip~

As you can see -- and as Ben Bernanke surely sees -- the picture remains grim. Just 75% of these guys are in full-time work -- or, to put it another way, one in four men of prime working age in America lacks a full-time job.

[...]

[MichaelP]

How about real numbers on inflation too? How about underemployment and part time employment? What is the mean wage and what was it the last 4 years? There isn't one Government statistic that I trust...

Mike

[Texas Fossil]

If you add in the men over 55, wonder how bad it would be?

[Why So Serious]

How do you say that everything is getting better, but we still need rates at 0.0% until 2014, and do it with a straight face?