(AP)
(CNSNews.com) – Although the “unemployment rate” in the United States for November is 4.6% -- a rate last reached 9 years ago in August 2007 – the “real unemployment” rate is much higher, more than double at 9.3% nationwide.
Real unemployment, or the U-6 number, as calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) includes “total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers” and part-time workers age 16 and over.
As the BLS explains on its website, the “unemployment rate,” or U-3 number, “includes all jobless persons who are available to take a job and have actively sought work in the past four weeks.”
That “unemployment rate” does not include part-time workers, underemployed, and marginally attached workers, which is factored in to the U-6 (underutilization) number, the actual rate for total unemployed in the United States.
As Gallup also explains, “Widely reported unemployment metrics in the U.S. do not accurately represent the reality of joblessness in America.
“For example, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does not count a person who desires work as unemployed if he or she is not working and has stopped looking for work over the past four weeks. Similarly, the BLS does not count someone as unemployed if he or she is, for instance, an out-of-work engineer, construction worker or retail manager who performs a minimum of one hour of work a week and receives at least $20 in compensation.”
(AP)
While the unemployment rate for November 2016 was 9.3%, the last time it was at a level close to that, 9.2%, was in April 2008. From June 2008 through September 2015, the real unemployment rate was in double digits, fluctuating from 10.1% to a high of 17.1% and finally back down to 10.0% (in September 2015).
The real unemployment rate has been in the 9’s since October 2015.