Mortimer Zuckerman: Those Jobless Numbers Are Even Worse Than They Look

Wall Street Journal, ^ | September 7, 2012 | Zuckerman

[george76]

Still above 8%—and closer to 19% in a truer accounting...

Don't be fooled by the headline unemployment number of 8.1% announced on Friday. The reason the number dropped to 8.1% from 8.3% in July was not because more jobs were created, but because more people quit looking for work.

The number for August reflects only people who have actively applied for a job in the past four weeks, either by interview or by filling an application form. But when the average period of unemployment is nearly 40 weeks, it is unrealistic to expect everyone who needs a job to keep seeking work consistently for months on end. You don't have to be lazy to recoil from the heartbreaking futility of knocking, week after week, on closed doors.

How many people are out of work but not counted as unemployed because they hadn't sought work in the past four weeks? Eight million. This is the sort of distressing number that turns up when you look beyond the headline number.

...

The key indicator of our employment health, in all the statistics, is what the government calls U-6. This is the number who have applied for work in the past six months and includes people who are involuntary part-time workers—government-speak for those individuals whose jobs have been cut back to two or three days a week.

They are working part-time only because they've been unable to find full-time work. This involuntary army of what's called "underutilized labor" has been hovering for months at about 15% of the workforce. Include the eight million who have simply given up looking, and the real unemployment rate is closer to 19%.

In short, the president's ill-designed stimulus program was a failure

[presidio9]

I think not. Mort's a businessman.

Correct, though, if anything, Zuckerman leans to the right. Familiarity with his editorials (not the Op-Eds) in the Daily News would seem to indicate that. Before Obama, the News endorsed George W. Bush twice.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks bitt.

• Real Unemployment Rate Is 11.4%
• Corrupt Media Continues to Cover Up Obama’s Solyndra Disaster
• Skills gap is hampering labor market (ZERO job growth in small-business sector)
• Gaffetastic!… Obama Pulls a Biden, Tells Audience, “Three Proud Words – Made in the USA!”
• Obama Widens Lead over Romney; 48% of US Give Obama Good or Excellent Marks
• Surprise! HHS pilot program to send 2 million poor seniors from Medicare into … “voucher” programs
• Romney Struggles to Gain Traction in Battlegrounds
• Flush with cash, Romney moves into Obama territory, upper Midwest states (Michigan and WI)
• Inside story of Obama’s struggle to keep Congress from controlling outcome of debt ceiling crisis
• Social Security combats bullet rumors(Just for target practice)
• Why does Social Security need 174,000 bullets?(SSA explains)
• Indian American governers Haley, Jindal bat for Romney (Some nobody MI Dem defends Hussein)
• PPP: Obama up single digits in Colorado, Michigan
• Interesting statistic(for 2012 we are not even creating enough jobs for every college graduate)
• Gawker article takes sympathetic look at pedophiles