Any system of pegging the unemployment rate that shows unemployment going up by 0.2% when there are 275,000 jobs added, causes me to lose some faith in the validity of the process. That’s predicated on the idea that more jobs weren’t lost than there were gained. And that seems to be what’s revealed here.
What is the real unemployment rate? Does anyone actually know?
The U6 unemployment rate counts not only people without work seeking full-time employment (the more familiar U-3 rate), but also counts "marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons." Note that some of these part-time workers counted as employed by U-3 could be working as little as an hour a week. And the "marginally attached workers" include those who have gotten discouraged and stopped looking, but still want to work. The age considered for this calculation is 16 years and over
The system we use that can come to these numbers does this: (# unemployed and looking for work) divided by (# employed plus # unemployed and looking for work) = unemployment rate.
If you can add jobs and that's all that happens, the unemployment rate goes down. If you add jobs while at the same time a bunch of unemployed who weren't looking for work start looking for work, the unemployment rate can go up, which is what happened here.
And yes, it's all mishmashed gov't statistical hoo-ha. The real unemployment rate - working age people who should be working but don't have jobs (i.e., not stay-at-home moms, students, etc.) is about 17% last I checked.