Great post by Bill Humbert on RecruitingBlogs.com to understand the unemployment rate. Have you read the “great news” that we are at a low right now, at 7.8% ?
I think it’s all a lie. Bill shares a really interesting link from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: The rate being reported is 100% based on who is filing for, or collecting, unemployment!
We all know there are people who don’t collect unemployment who should still be considered “unemployed.”
The “official unemployment rate” is 7.8 for Sept 2012. Check out, in this chart Bill links to from the BLS, the sixth line (U-6), which includes:
U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force
That number? About double, at 14.7.
And don’t get me started on the unemployment rate for veterans, which is shamefully higher than that.
The newspapers do us a real disservice by not sharing accurate information… but we all knew that. I just read a supposed Mark Twain quote that said something like if you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.
Of course, to the person who is out of work or underemployed, the rate to them is meaningless… in their world it is 100%.
I learned this the hard way in Jan 2006.
What are you doing to prepare for the day when your unemployment rate is 100%?
