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Is Unemployment Higher Than Reported?

June 5th, 2009 at 9:20 am Gusher | 3 Comments |

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So the unemployment rate went up to 9.4% this morning. Or did it? If you strongly suspect that the unemployment rate is higher than that, you will find support in the columns of John Crudele at the New York Post, one of the more unjustly overlooked business columnists. (Because of his venue, I suspect.) He has been writing for years about how the Labor Department has been understating the true level of unemployment. (Starting with Bill Clinton, natch.) Read the whole thing, as they say.

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3 Comments so far ↓

  • ottovbvs // Jun 5, 2009 at 8:12 am

    Actually it started well before Clinton labor have been shading the employment statistics with classification games ever since the seventies. They do understate unemployment but if they understate unemployment now they understated unemployment during the entire Bush presidency when we were reading endless boastful eds in the Post and WSJ about how well employment was doing and it was only a matter of time before real incomes for 80% of the country caught up with the rises being enjoyed by the top 20%. For better or worse the published numbers are what they are and at least provide a realistic comparison over the last 20 years.

  • balconesfault // Jun 5, 2009 at 8:24 am

    http://tinyurl.com/underreportingunemployment“the unemployment rate has been low only because government programs, especially Social Security disability, have effectively been buying people off the unemployment rolls and reclassifying them as ”not in the labor force.’”In other words, the government has cooked the books. It has been a more subtle manipulation than the one during the Reagan administration, when people serving in the military were reclassified from ”not in the labor force” to ”employed” in order to reduce the unemployment rate. Nonetheless, the impact has been the same.”The Obama Administration has in fact been banging the drums trying to highlight how much danger there is from rising unemployment, and how there is a need for government to keep playing more of a role in the economy than we’d normally want it to do. Perhaps we should all be getting our economic indicators from Rush Limbaugh:LIMBAUGH: But during all this growth I havent lost any audience. Ive never had financially a down year. Theres supposedly a recession, but weve got – what is this May? Back in February we already had 102% of 2008 overbooked for 2009. So I always believed that if were going to have a recession, just dont participate. President’s Club Dinner, May 4, 2009

  • midcon // Jun 6, 2009 at 5:53 am

    Statistics are developed and used as a means to validate what people who can use their God given senses already know. It is irrelavent whether unemployment is 9, 10, 11, or 12 percent. Without the statistics, we know A LOT of people are out of work. Quibbling over the percent is silly. Another article on this site that isn’t worth the space to display or the effort to comment on. Hmmm. then why did expend the effort? Well, kinda to articulate my opinion about the general trend over the last several weeks of New Majority trend towards less than meaty musngs. Might be running out of beef. Let’s get back to the significant issues David. The economy sucks, we know that, Unemployment might be 9.4 or 10.234987%. Whatever the number it is A LOT. We need solutions not statistics.

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