So if you have not looked for work in four weeks, the BLS does not count you as unemployed. If you've been listed discouraged for over a year, you're among millions of Americans who don't count either. John Williams at shadowstats.com put it this way: "The Clinton administration dismissed to the non-reporting netherworld about five million discouraged workers who had been so categorized for more than a year." Williams, when including these long-term discouraged, arrives at his SGS Alternate US unemployment percentage of 22.1%. Please note that, already, 35.6% (appr. 5.8 million) of today's unemployed (the ones that ARE counted) fall in the long-term category.
To summarize, the mostly widely quoted official US government employment numbers, the (non-farm) Payroll Survey, routinely ignores between 70-80% of unemployed Americans. The less quoted Household Survey fails to count "only" about 50% of the jobless. The rest reside in the netherworld. The reality is that close to 1 million Americans still become unemployed every month a trend that shows no sign of slowing down.
If we take the 153.9 million number for the total workforce, and John Williams' 22.1% for the unemployment rate, we find that 34 million Americans are currently unemployed.
http://www.shadowstats.com/article/employment
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/
To summarize, the mostly widely quoted official US government employment numbers, the (non-farm) Payroll Survey, routinely ignores between 70-80% of unemployed Americans. The less quoted Household Survey fails to count "only" about 50% of the jobless. The rest reside in the netherworld. The reality is that close to 1 million Americans still become unemployed every month a trend that shows no sign of slowing down.
If we take the 153.9 million number for the total workforce, and John Williams' 22.1% for the unemployment rate, we find that 34 million Americans are currently unemployed.
http://www.shadowstats.com/article/employment
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/
