That 50% unemployment for blacks in New York that Kay Johnson mentions in these comments must have been calculated in accordance with this calculation reality. Because of the way unemployment rates are falsely calculated, there never has and never will be an official 50% unemployment rate reported out for any group anywhere. The way the unemployment rate is cooked up, probably the highest possible official unemployment rate you could have for the US as a whole is roughly 12 percent (not far from the 10.2 percent that was actually reached recently) and the highest possible official overall or regional black unemployment rate you could possibly have would be roughly twice that (25%).
Note that the multipliers above apply to the current situation. Those multipliers will have to be gradually increased in the years ahead if the growth in jobs remains trivial or worse, because if so, the official unemployment rate will be more and more distorted downward.
Although people who read real news are generally aware that if you stop looking for work because you have concluded you most likely can't get one you are not counted as unemployed, what even they are not aware of is that once you have been unemployed for more than a year or two, you are generally not counted as unemployed even if you ARE actively looking for a job. The "actively looking for a job" thing applies, if not officially, certainly unofficially to only those who did have a job within the last year or two. At the very least, it can be said that the survey and statistical methods used preclude picking up as unemployed many and probably most of those who are actively looking for a job but who have not had a job for more than a year or two.
Furthermore, if you are self employed in any way shape or form (including even if your "business" loses money) you CAN NOT be counted as unemployed in the US even if you would much rather have a job and so you are actively looking for a job at the same time you are self employed. If you are “self employed” (and who isn’t who is “unemployed,” really?) you are BY RULE not counted as unemployed even if you make virtually no money from your self employment, or even if you lose money. This distortion is never ever mentioned even by all the “why the unemployment rate is much more than reported” articles.
The upshot of all of this is that the only real way to get at unemployment in the US is to look at the number of jobs (with any income or else above a certain pay level of your choice) and then divide that number into the number of people who you think in a perfect full employment economy would have a job (for example, say, 80% of those between the ages of 25 and 60). Then you would subtract that percentage ratio from 100% to get a real unemployment rate.
In practice, to save a lot of time you can use the multipliers or, better yet, you can get at real unemployment by using the employment to population ratio, which is, ironically, reported out monthly by Bureau of Labor Statistics itself. (Who would have known that BLS actually does have information with which the actual unemployment rate can be determined, laugh out loud?)
That ratio, expressed annually, declined sharply from a peak of 64.4 percent in 2000 to 59.2 percent in 2009. This means that 5.2% of the population (about one in twenty people) had a job in 2000 but did not have a job in 2009. The latest percentage reported is even worse, about 58%. Note that this methodology is excellent for tracking the real change in the labor market, although to use it to calculate a real unemployment rate would require you to estimate what percentage of the entire population would not need or be able to have a job even if jobs could be automatically obtained.
Then you would have to adjust the raw employment to population ratio accordingly. If you did that, you would probably arrive at a similar place as with the multiplier method: the employment to population ratio right now when those who definitely don’t need or can not have a job are removed from the population is roughly 78%, meaning that the real unemployment rate is roughly 22%.
In summary:
--58% of the population has a job
--20% of the population would not need or could not function on a job even if they could automatically get one. This would include true criminals and also self-employed who do better self employed than they could with a job.
--22% of the population is unemployed: they need a job and there is no job for them.
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Someone begged to differ with the above overall, but he started off with an apparent agreement, which ironically I construed as a disagreement....
Unity Progress said:
Although people who read real news are generally aware that if you stop looking for work because you have concluded you most likely can't get one you are not counted as unemployed....
The Doubting Thomas said:
Correct, that's because you are not considered part of the work force if you don't have a job and are not looking for one.
Unity Progress:
And you are wrong. Most people are part of the work force whether they are looking for a job or not. Anyone who could theoretically work is part of the work force. People who are self employed are part of the work force; whether they are gainfully employed should be determined by whether and how much money they are making.
During World War Two and at the end of the First Great Depression, factory employers virtually came looking for people who were not actively "looking for a job" to work in the war factories.
Where is it written that people have to waste valuable time and money "looking for a job" that probably does not exist for them? Money and time spent looking for a job is money and time not available for self employment or for just enjoying life which, unlike "looking for a job," is free of charge.
What about people who don't have good clothes or who don't have transportation with which to "look for a job"? What about people whose teeth have rotted out because they can't afford dental care? Are they going to get a job after even a year of looking for a job? What about the millions of homeless people? What about people who have no phone service? Unless you toe the right wing line, all of these people are part of the work force.
The most well known requirements for being counted as unemployed are analogous to the requirements for voter registration. How so? Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that it is no big deal to have to register to vote in any way the local government sets up those requirements. And yet voter registration has been a perpetual source of opportunities for shady right wing operators to deny people the right to vote. In recent years brand new identification requirements have been added to the list of voting registration requirements in various states. People have lost their lives in disputes about and there have been numerous court cases over the years over the seemingly innocuous requirements that are actually sometimes onerous and not possible to meet requirements for voter registration.
Americans are conditioned to think that things such as voter registration and needing to look for a job to be counted as unemployed are no big deal, but unfortunately, they are a very big deal indeed when all of the facts and all of the diverse circumstances of real people are taken into consideration. In many other countries, voter registration is much more automatic than it is in the United States. Similarly, being counted as unemployed when you are unemployed is much more automatic than it is in the States.
The person who begged to differ was especially dubious of this line from my original:
What even they are not aware of is that once you have been unemployed for more than a year or two, you are generally not counted as unemployed even if you ARE actively looking for a job.To which he said:
"I call BS. Where do you get this information and why do you think it's true?"
To which I responded:
In real life, anyone who has been unemployed for more than a year or two will have one or more of the following characteristics:
--They will be homeless, so there is no way they can be interviewed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to be counted as unemployed.
--They will not have a phone at all, so there is no way they can be interviewed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to be counted as unemployed.
--They will have a cell phone number only, which traditionally and so far as I know can still not be used by survey takers including BLS.
--They will have an internet phone number only, and such numbers are most definitely not used by survey takers including BLS.
--They will have joined the military and are not in any BLS classification. But clearly they are unemployed from the civilian labor force, or else employed with respect to the civilian plus military labor force combined, take your pick. They are not, as BLS claims, in no relationship whatsoever with respect to the labor force.
--They are in prison and are not in any BLS classification. But clearly they are unemployed from the civilian labor force.
--Anyone who works even an hour a week is counted as employed! As absurd as that is, it is literally true.
--Anyone who is self employed, who in other words has even the tiniest and/or the flimsiest of businesses, including one with no customers(!) is counted as outside the labor force, and so that person is not employed even if looking for a job while operating that business. The first question in the BLS unemployment survey is: “Does anyone in this household have a business or a farm?” If the answer is yes, than that person (or those persons) are not part of the universe from which employed and unemployed is calculated.
--All persons who did at least 15 hours of unpaid work in a family-owned enterprise operated by someone in their household are classified as employed, even though they made no money!
--All persons who were temporarily absent from their regular jobs because of illness, vacation, bad weather, industrial dispute, or various personal reasons, whether or not they were paid for the time off, are classified as employed!
--Certain ways of looking for a job don't count as looking for a job according to BLS. Only certain, traditional kinds of "active job search" qualifies an unemployed person for being declared to be and counted as unemployed. According to BLS, “passive methods of job search do not have the potential to result in a job offer and therefore do not qualify as active job search methods. Examples of passive methods include attending a job training program or course, or merely reading about job openings that are posted in newspapers or on the Internet.”
And even this is not a complete list of people who are unemployed but are not counted as unemployed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The list of loopholes, of categories of people who are unemployed but are not counted that way goes on and on and on. A certain number of unemployed people commit suicide every year due to the many ravages caused by unemployment.
A very substantial percentage (very possibly a majority) of those suicides are not even considered to be unemployed by the Government. In other words, there are people every year who lose their lives due to a condition that the Government does not even recognize as having affected them!
The BLS page for this matter is here: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
You will see that this page covers most of the above loopholes if you take the time to read it through.
The BLS itself publishes more expansive measures than the “official unemployment rate” that is reported by the Corporate Media, but even the most expansive one leaves several of the loopholes above intact.
The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.
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