Every month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes six “measures of labor underutilization” (i.e. unemployment). The official unemployment rate used by politicians and the media, referred to as U3, measures the percent of the civilian labor force that is out of work. (http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/
But U3 does not include so-called “discouraged workers” who have completely stopped looking for jobs, “marginally attached” workers who had not searched for a job within the past month, or those involuntarily employed part-time instead of full time. U6 includes every willing worker who wants, but is not able to secure a full time position, so a state’s U6 rate is obviously higher than its U3.
Much higher, in fact. For example, Michigan, which has the highest U3 figure in the nation (11 percent), has an eye-popping 19.2 percent U-6 unemployment rate. Nine other states’ U6 figures are also above 15 percent, according to BLS:
Oregon: 18.4%
California: 17.7%
Rhode Island: 17.1%
South Carolina: 16.8%
Tennessee: 15.7%
Florida: 15.6 %
Arizona: 15.5%
Nevada: 15.2%
Ohio: 15.1%
Shadow Government Statistics (
shadowstats.com
) puts the nation’s true unemployment rate even higher – close to 20 percent – which is well above the U6 and into Great Depression territory, when nearly one out of five workers found themselves unemployed.
