Unemployment rate rises to 17%
As they say, the devil is in the details. One of the problems with crunching numbers is that you can massage them any way you like and not many people bother to read the fine print. That is why ignoring discouraged workers maybe fine in the normal course, but is dangerous in times like this. There is another number that I like to look: the total number of unemployed people at a given time, not just the ones that have applied for benefits or are receiving them.
Figures collected for Reuters by John Williams, from the electronic newsletter Shadowstats.com, suggest that, while we are not there yet, the comparison is not as outlandish as it might initially seem. By his count, if unemployment were still tallied the way it was in the 1930s, today’s jobless rate would be closer to 16.5 percent — more than double the stated rate. “I expect that unemployment in the current downturn, which will be particularly deep and protracted, eventually will rival, if not top, the 25 percent seen in the Great Depression,” Williams said. He and other critics have one particular sticking point with the current way of measuring unemployment: the treatment of discouraged workers.
