Major h/t to Calculated Risk
In today's NY Times (See: "Broader Measure of U.S. Unemployment Stands at 17.5%."), David Leonhardt, IMHO one of the most optimistic folks writing about our economy in the MSM, reports on a study of the US Department of Labor's U.6 Unemployment Index that the paper has just concluded with assistance from economists from that government organization.
Among the conclusions of the study: "...unemployment and underemployment have risen to their highest level since the Depression."
The U.6 Index, which provides "the broadest measure of unemployment and underemployment tracked by the Labor Department," includes those officially unemployed, discouraged workers that have looked for a job in the past year, and millions of underemployed part-time workers seeking full-time work.
Friday morning's Bureau of Labor Statistics' "October 2009 Employment Situation Report" noted, among a vast array of metrics and survey results, an increase in the U.3 Index unemployment rate (the more widely-publicized number in the MSM) from 9.8% in September to 10.2% in October. The U.6 Index jumped from 17.1% in September to 17.5% in October.
More from Leonhardt...
Broader Measure of U.S. Unemployment Stands at 17.5%
New York Times
By DAVID LEONHARDT
In Print: November 7, 2009 Published Online: November 6, 2009
For all the pain caused by the Great Recession, the job market still was not in as bad shape as it had been during the depths of the early 1980s recession -- until now.
With the release of the jobs report on Friday, the broadest measure of unemployment and underemployment tracked by the Labor Department has reached its highest level in decades. If statistics went back so far, the measure would almost certainly be at its highest level since the Great Depression.
--SNIP--
The rate is highest today, sometimes 20 percent, in states that had big housing bubbles, like California and Arizona, or that have large manufacturing sectors, like Michigan, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island and South Carolina.
The new benchmark is a sign of just how much damage financial crises tend to inflict. A recent book by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, two economists, found that over the last century the typical crisis had caused the jobless rate in the country where it occurred to rise for almost five years. By that standard, the jobless rate here would continue rising for two more years, through the end of 2011.
I tend to shy away from quoting Leonhardt, because he has a track record/tendency to cherry-pick positive facts (i.e.: omitting other key facts in his reporting, which would undermine his premises) about the economy, opting to focus mostly on "happy news." (He's a favorite for quotes in diaries by our "happy newsers.") Even Calculated Risk, well-respected for evenhanded coverage of the financial sector, just three days ago, noted Leonhardt's rose-colored coverage of our economy.
And, even in this piece, the real lede, also as noted by none other than Calculated Risk (see link, above), is buried in the article.
Leonhardt spends most of the article, in his inimitable style, ignoring some very basic facts--news items I've covered in multiple diaries in the past--such as the fact that the current "Great Recession" includes the worst recorded period of job losses this country's experienced since the Department of Labor started tracking that metric. Here's a particularly good analysis of the matter from the Economic Policy Institute, via Naked Capitalism: "Unemployment: The Harder You Look, The Uglier It Appears." Leonhardt even mentions a minor rise in salaries of those still employed, but he fails to mention that household income is actually less than it was 10 years ago. I could go on about this -- in terms of how the MSM and some in our government, as well as some in the blogging community -- seem to go out of their way to diminish the severity of
the current economic downturn on a regular basis, while scores of millions suffer on Main Street. But, it's a bit too tangential to the primary points of this particular story, IMHO.
What I will say is that the economy has reached a point where even someone noted for presenting an overly-optimistic view of our current financial train wreck is to the point where even they have to acknowledge a reality that Main Street has known for quite awhile.
For those of you who were otherwise preoccupied, yesterday, with many just trying to make ends meet as you went about your daily lives, here are links to three other stories, including a link to October's Bureau of Labor Statistics' Employment Situation Report (contained in more than one of them), which Calculated Risk noted as being ..."ugly," and with even worse internals. Frankly, to say anything much more positive than that would be to distort reality. Check it all out right here:
"190k Jobs Lost, 10.2% Unemployment Rate"
"Employment-Population Ratio, Record Part-Time Workers, Weak Holiday Hiring"
"Unemployment: Stress Tests, Unemployed over 26 Weeks, Diffusion Index"
Peace!