The Real Number--Unemployment Hits 15.6 Percent

Not many people are aware of the U-6 report that is issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Most news organizations report the more popular U.S. Department of Labor: Bureau of Labor Statistics--Civilian Unemployment Rate. If you read this report today then you learned that unemployment jumped to 8.5 percent.

There is another category of unemployed that are not counted in that report. They are described in the U-6 report this way,

Marginally attached workers are persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached,have given a job-market related reason for not looking currently for a job.

The U-6 report counts everyone that is unemployed. To view the report go here.

U-6

Total unemployed
plus all marginally attached workers
plus total employed part time for economic reasons
as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers

The number reported today for this series is 15.6 % (the non-seasonally adjusted number is worse at 16.2 %). This compares to 9.1 percent reported March, 2008.

This paints a very ugly picture for the future.

Unemployment rose to 25 percent during the Great Depression.

Bob DeMarco is a citizen journalist and twenty year Wall Street veteran. Bob has written more than 500 articles with more than 11,000 links to his work on the Internet. Content from All American Investor has been syndicated on Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Pluck, Blog Critics, and a growing list of newspaper websites. Bob is actively seeking syndication and writing assignments.

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