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Is the Official Unemployment Rate the Real Unemployment Rate?

By: Ben Domenech (Diary)  |  April 4th, 2011 at 10:09 AM  | 

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson is joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the differing unemployment statistics, and the consequences of long term unemployment benefits.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Gallup Finds U.S. Unemployment Rate at 10.0% in March
Coffee & Markets: Friday’s discussion of unemployment numbers
Jobs and Wages

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  • Death_of_the_Donkey

    A big factor here may be the boomers retiring. Since mid 2008, 2 million+ “boomers” dropped out of the labor force. Also note, that if the BLS survey(s) was unreliable or untrusted, then Wall Street wouldn’t care about the numbers (but they do greatly).

  • cja99

    The Obama Regime is not counting the thousands of people who took part time jobs to survive or people who have stopped looking for a job.
    The employment numbers are phony.

  • http://beaglescout.wordpress.com;http://news.unifiedpatriots.com/ Beaglescout

    That’s going to be a short broadcast.

    Well, unless you try to find a statistical source that is directly comparable to historical measurements of unemployment. Then it could get pretty darn long.

    • Death_of_the_Donkey

      The CPS (Current Population Survey) has been measuring unemployment in virtually the same manner since the late 40′s. Also, our measure of unemployment (U-3) is comparable to EU countries measurements. The major changes to the survey have been in the other subsets of unemployment and not so much to the U-3 number (which used to be known as U-5, but with the same formula) that is widely reported each month.

      • http://beaglescout.wordpress.com;http://news.unifiedpatriots.com/ Beaglescout

        So comparing this time period to the Great Depression, which is exactly what it most resembles, is difficult because the unemployment measurements were rejiggered precisely to conceal what was obvious during FDR’s Great Depression. Now we are back at 20% unemployment or higher, while consumer price increases have also been recalculated to hide the incline. High unemployment and high price increases. Sounds like a Depression to me. But not by the numbers that are designed to conceal.

        • Death_of_the_Donkey

          Even the highest, most inclusive measure of unemployment (which counts people employed part-time as unemployed and counts all discouraged workers) is only at like 15.x%. It wasn’t that unemployment was rejiggered after the depression it was that we didn’t have an accurate way to measure unemployment until after the depression (in other words, the depression era stats have a far higher margin of error than today’s).

  • http://www.FranBaker.com frankieb

    We know several people who’ve given up on finding a job. They’re too young for SS and the best they can find is part-time work with no benefits. I can’t believe ANYONE would vote to re-elect this BOzo. But they’re going for $1 Billion in campaign funds, guess they’ll be able to buy some votes.

    • Death_of_the_Donkey

      Thanks to the exhaustive nature of the Household Survey, we know exactly who is out of work”

      Without high school diploma – 13.7%
      Just high school – 9.5%
      Some college – 7.4%
      College degree – 4.4%

      Also:
      16-19 years old – 24.5%
      20-24 – 15.0%
      25-34 – 9.1%
      35-44 – 7.2%
      45-54 – 7.1%
      55+ – 6.5%

      So in fact, it is primarily the uneducated and young (with a huge overlap here obviously) that are unemployed right now.

  • http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

    It would not be a problem using an imperfect number as a proxy for unemployment except that the way the government has scored it has changed over time.

    So it is difficult to measure it against different time periods.

  • Common_Cents