Is the Real Unemployment Rate Over 10%?

Over 1.2 million former-workers stopped looking for work, May through July according to last employment report of the BLS. If these former-workers had been counted, the "official" unemployment rate would be 10.2% rather than the officially quoted 9.5% according to Charles McMillion, the president and chief economist of MBG Information Services.

“We have a large number of people who have just given up hope of finding a job,” said Mr. McMillion. He pointed out that there are record numbers — “I mean lights-out record numbers” — of long-term unemployed people who are still looking for jobs. Of the 14.6 million men and women officially counted as unemployed, nearly 45 percent have been out of work for six months or longer.

Nearly a million and a half people have been out of work for at least 99 weeks.
Said Mr. McMillion: “When you combine the long-term unemployed with those who are dropping out and those who are working part-time because they can’t find anything else, it is just far beyond anything we’ve seen in the job market since the 1930s.”

There are 14.6 million people officially jobless, 5.9 million who have stopped looking but say they want a job, and 8.5 million who are working part time but would like to work full time, you end up with nearly 30 million Americans who cannot find the work they want and desperately need.

And the response from Congress? The senate goes on vacation for 5 weeks.

News and Comment - No Job News