Debt City

The new unemployment numbers are out and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics we now have 7.2 percent of our workforce looking for jobs, the highest unemployment rate in 15 years.

That’s 11.1 million people searching for jobs and almost 2.6 million lost jobs in the final year of the Bush Administration– but that’s not the whole story.

First, we have those who have jobs but want better jobs.

“In December,” says the BLS, “the number of persons who worked part time for economic reasons (some-times referred to as involuntary part-time workers) continued to increase, reaching 8.0 million. The number of such workers rose by 3.4 million over the past 12 months. This category includes persons who would like to work full time but were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find full-time jobs.”

Second, we have those who are so discouraged they’re not evening looking for employment.

“About 1.9 million persons (not seasonally adjusted) were marginally attached to the labor force in December, 564,000 more than 12 months earlier,” says the government. “These individuals wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Among the marginally attached, there were 642,000 discouraged workers in December, up by 279,000 from a year earlier. Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work specifically because they believe no jobs are available for them. The other 1.3 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in December had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities.”

In other words, it’s not just that 11.1 million people are out of work, the real numbers are actually far worse. It’s only by statistical sleight-of-hand that we’re able to hold down the unemployment rate to 7.2 percent.

The bottom line: If you have a job or clients, hang on. If you need a job remember that employers have more leverage each time the unemployment rate rises — and the unemployment rate is rising more than the government admits.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 2:24 am and is filed under jobs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.