Thursday, August 9, 2012

How Labor makes some workers disappear (Now, even U6 figures under-report joblessness)

New York Post ^ | 08/09/2012 | John Crudele

President Obama can thank Bill Clinton for the fact that the unemployment situation doesn’t look worse.
Thanks to a tiny tweak in definitions made by the Clinton White House back in 1994, Obama’s life is a whole lot easier.

Don’t get me wrong — not easy, just easier.

Last Friday, the Labor Department announced that the headline unemployment rate for July — the one followed in the newspapers — notched up one-tenth of a point to 8.3 percent. And the president is certainly going to have a hard time explaining why the jobless level is still so high.
But there’s another figure — called the U-6, buried deep in the Labor report — that should really be of concern to the president. And here’s where Clinton did all future presidents a favor: making the U-6 number look better than it really should.
U-6 is defined as “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.”
Are you clear on what this number is? Of course not — it’s gobbledygook.
It means that U-6 includes people out of work plus anyone who wants a full-time job, can’t find it and is settling for part-time work.
The unemployment rate in the U-6 definition rose to 15 percent in July from 14.9 percent in June. It had been 16.3 percent in July 2011.
But it’s those Americans not in the definition — discouraged workers — that you will want to know about.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...

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