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... of the currently unemployed (actually 5.9% this month).
In actuality, "discouraged workers" (those who have given up looking for work), those actively looking but who have exhausted their benefits, and those who have not found work due to chronic disabilities, etc., are not figured into the official statistics.
The actual compilation of total work force is actually done by a phone survey of 1300 households, which is used to modify the baseline statistic, and the definition of "working" is exceptionally broad. If you worked at all for pay (whether that's for an employer or cleaning out the garage of your brother-in-law for cash) in the prior month, you are considered among the employed.
My guess, adding in the estimated numbers of the above, that the real unemployment rate is more likely 11-12%. Quite more dire than the official unemployment numbers suggest.
The other disturbing trend is that average wages of the re-employed are declining (about 13% this year)--a sure sign that some of the unemployed are taking low-wage service jobs.
Another problem area is the average time to find another job, which now averages 20 weeks. Since benefits for many of the unemployed average only 29 weeks, and that this figure is an average, it certainly reinforces the fact that a fair number of those now receiving benefits will not be able to find a job when unemployment benefits expire.
The last problem area related to unemployment is new job growth, which has been negative except for one or two months since the recession started. It takes 150,000 new jobs a month to accommodate people just entering the job market--so if there's continuing job losses, those people don't get jobs, and because they have no work history and are not entitled to benefits, those people don't show up in the unemployment statistics, either.
It's not as pretty a picture as the official rate draws.
Cheers.
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