The 'hidden' unemployed (What the official unemployment rate doesn't include)

American Thinker ^ | 09/23/2012 | Rick Moran

[SeekAndFind]

Every month when the jobless numbers come out, Obama critics take pains to point out that the "official" number is very misleading.

One of the major reasons is that the published unemployment rate does not include such "hidden" workers as those working part time who would like to work full time, and those who have given up looking for work.

Reuters has a good piece today on the latter:

Economists, analyzing government data, estimate about 4 million fewer people are in the labor force than in December 2007, primarily due to a lack of jobs rather than the normal aging of America's population. The size of the shift underscores the severity of the jobs crisis. If all those so-called discouraged jobseekers had remained in the labor force, August's jobless rate of 8.1 percent would have been 10.5 percent.

The jobs crisis spurred the Federal Reserve last week to launch a new bond-buying program and promise to keep it running until the labor market improves. It also poses a challenge to President Barack Obama's re-election bid.

The labor force participation rate, or the proportion of working-age Americans who have a job or are looking for one has fallen by an unprecedented 2.5 percentage points since December 2007, slumping to a 31-year low of 63.5 percent. "We never had a drop like that before in other recessions. The economy is worse off than people realize when people just look at the unemployment rate," said Keith Hall, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia.

The participation rate would be expected to hold pretty much steady if the economy was growing at a normal pace. Only about a third of the drop in the participation rate is believed to be the result of the aging U.S. population.

[Tanniker Smith]

I've told many people to ignore whatever numbers and statistics that people try to use about unemployment. No one will vote based on that number. They'll vote based on whether or not they have full-time employment or how long they've been without it!

"So if you want to say it's below 8%, Mr. Lib, fine, say it. But don't get overconfident in that."

[ClearCase_guy]

We shall see.

My recollection is that under Bush we had unemployment around 5%. The Democrats said that it was the worst economy since Hoover. It was a jobless recovery. Nothing but “Mcjobs”. I knew people here in MA who said: “I have a great job. I’m doing well. My neighbor is doing well. Heck, even my no-good brother-in-law is doing well — but, golly, I watch the news; I know that a lot of people are hurting. We need to get Democrats into office and turn this mess around.”

And that’s how Nancy Pelosi came into power.

Today, I know people who say, “I’m worried about my job. My company is barely hanging on. My neighbor lost his job 6 months ago and can’t find anything. My brother-in-law is living out of his car. The only thing that keeps me going is the news. I see that we’ve turned the corner. I know we’re in a recovery. All I can say is that we need to keep the Republicans out of power so that these good times can be made to last.”

Here in MA, people are strange. They don’t believe what they see. They believe what the media tells them.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

Funny, in a head-on collision sort of way, that these people you are describing think that they are the more intelligent of the two principle rival ideologies.

Yet, they are as dumb as the bricks the spit on. And there is no way to convince them of how stupid they are.

[jeffc]

Well, people complain about paying (in insurance rates) for someone else’s “mistakes”, say like all the healthcare a 40-year cigarette smoker dying lung cancer gets. With Obamacare taking over, the government will say they need to regulate what you eat so that you don’t “use up” more healthcare resources than anyone else. I wonder how much more healthcare a homo dying of AIDS consumes than a non-smoking, non-risk taking heterosexual.......

[jeffc]

I have no idea how the above got posted to this thread. It's supposed to be in the "Uncle Sam wants to regulate what you eat" thread......

???????????????

[GrannyK]

People who are uncounted.....are like the fellow we just had to let go. He is 74 years old but worked a couple of hours a day for us.....we paid into unemployment for years....he went to sign up & was told he can draw $55 per week...however that amount will be deducted from his Social Security check. Thus, he goes uncounted as not employed & falls into the cracks. It sucks!!

[The Duke]

A much better indicator of the state of the economy would be total federal income tax receipts. That figure would take into account the difference between a high-paying job and someone performing menial work. (A “job” is not always a “job”).

[wally_bert]

A lot of people here in SC think the same way.

[Tula Git]

bump