More Than Fifteen Million Unemployed Americans are not Recognized or Counted as Unemployed by the U.S. Government

Always multiply the main, most commonly reported "unemployment rate" in the US by two to get a conservative estimate of the real unemployment rate. Multiply by 2.2 to get a middle of the road estimate and multiply by 2.5 to get a high end but still reasonable estimate. You would have to multiply by 2.5, for example, if you wanted to include inmates who would not have committed crimes had they had a job at the time they ran afoul of the law.

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.

=================================
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.

----------------------
Comments are very much appreciated. Comments are moderated but all comments will be approved except for those that do not belong on Unity-Progress. For example, comments that contain any commercial advertising and ones that contain objectionable hatred will not be approved. Many comments that appear will receive a return comment by Unity-Progress. To comment click the green "comments" link at the bottom of this post. You can also send an email. The email address for Unity-Progress is unity.progress.mail at gmail. Use this address for all communications, including requests for link exchange if you have a good economics or political site.

There is no Evidence That Obama"s "Rube Goldberg Care" Will Improve Things

Editorial Notes: The following was written on March 27 and not posted until now (May 27). Beginning April 15, 2010, Unity-Progress will post anything new we do here first and then later "cross post" at CommonDreams.org if and only if:

(a) There is a relevant article at Common Dreams under which the item can be posted and
(b) I think of cross posting and take the time to do that. I will not cross post everything nor even necessarily the majority of what goes here.

In other words, beginning immediately Unity Progress gets first priority, the automatic tie-in between Common Dreams and Unity is repealed, and therefore the miserable pattern of late postings at Unity will end. None of this is meant to state or imply that I think anything less of Common Dreams, which I continue to look at as the best progressive Site on the Internet. I'm just expanding from the roots, so to speak.

This site will only very seldom show up in Google Search results. If you don't want to lose track of this site, you need to bookmark this site in some way.

====================================================

Are they gone yet? I mean the special event guests of Common Dreams stopping by to brow beat and chest pound against the unreformed commies here at Common Dreams, the one and only site among sites with comments and some traffic that I know of that was overwhelmingly against Obama and Big Insurance' Rube Goldberg Care from day one. Firedoglake has been almost as resolute and you have to love Jane Hamsher over there, but even Firedoglake also has a disturbing number of Daily Kos and similar refugees with minds that seem to be seriously watered down by pro Obama corporate mush from the campaign and the early months of Lord Obama’s reign over the peasantry.

No, having read most of the comments, the special guests are thinning out but they are not quite completely gone yet. I see they are still posting their “but it’s better than what we had” and “how can you be so mean as to deny coverage to women and children due to preexisting conditions” riffs. Um, we don’t deny health care to anyone with our plan, not to mention that we don’t even need greedy, monopolistic, health care denying health insurance companies to run our plan. So get a clue before you try the equivalent of lecturing Einstein on physics.

We want our plan which is by far the best plan; we don't want no new plan at all.

Specifically to our guests: first, what is so complicated about understanding that some people will be hurt and some people will be helped by all the new laws? At this time, we can’t say exactly how many will be hurt and exactly how many will be helped, but it is a definite certainty (and admitted up front by the Democrats and the Congressional Budget Office) that there will be large numbers of both.

But is it normal or “to be expected” that major new laws benefit and hurt large (and different) groups of people? Yes, it is normal, that is, it’s normal if you are talking about a third world country! (As examples, removal of food import tariffs in Haiti or privatizations of water in various remote South and Central American countries come to mind.)

But on the good side of town, in the advanced countries, many of which you find in Europe and some of which you find in East Asia, virtually all major new laws benefit many more people than they harm. There are never large groups of people threatening to take up arms against Internal Revenue in those countries, no sir. And in those countries, there’s no “Well, in the years ahead, we’ll just have to keep track of the millions who are helped and the millions who are hurt and then about twenty years from now we’ll know whether the huge new law was a net benefit or a net loss for the citizens.

But it’s going to be a real nail biter. Dan Rather is saying it’s going to be tighter than a tick on a hog on a hot summer day. Laugh out loud. No, in the reputable and credible countries, they know for an absolute fact that the vast majority of people will be helped by major new laws before they even think of passing them. Whereas in the US, both the Democrats and the Republicans recklessly pass laws that are in effect and in part experiments to find out just how many peasants are hurt and just how many are helped.

And whereas, by contrast we know for an absolute fact that various types of single payer based systems work very well for decade after decade because we have more than enough evidence for that from numerous countries throughout the world. Whereas, we have no evidence whatsoever at the moment as to whether Obama's Rube Goldberg Care will work well.

And it almost goes without saying (but I’ve learned from experience you should say most of the “goes without sayings”) that no country other than the United States would seriously consider what actually just passed in the US, a particularly obnoxious, dangerous, and ironic combination of regressive taxation, restrictions on health care freedom, cuts to existing programs, and on the plus side curtailments of many of the most egregious violations of humanity of health insurance companies. ("Whew, that was one whopper of a price paid to stop pre-existing condition and rescission. I can’t imagine what the price the peasants will have to pay if WellPoint and the rest are to be forbidden from being monopolies! I think the peasants will be wearing togas and eating worms from the back yard if we go for anti-trust reform or the public option, so we better stop now.")

Second, what is so complicated about understanding that only in Wonderland can you look at the health care effects only while ignoring the effects on jobs and the economy as a whole? If the new laws prevent the labor market from recovering (to whatever extent it could without those laws which even I would say has to be to some extent) then Obama and company will be responsible for the worst and most reckless economic mismanagement since the Hoover and those who in 1935 and 1936 told Franklin Roosevelt that the Depression was over and it was time to get back to fiscal discipline (which resulted in many more Depression years featuring an extremely low stock market and many more years of additional job losses and lack of new jobs). Obama and company are gambling with the economy in general and with the job market in particular (not that they really care about your job or anyone else's job) but as I already implied, at least historians, who are sort of a “Super CBO,” will care.

Later, Dreamers.

A long discussion was generated by this intentionally provocative article. (Is anything I write not "intentionally provocative," laugh out loud?) Both the original article and the discussion about the article and about my response to the article (above) are here.

Here is by far my favorite among the postings in the discussion generated by my posting:

ardent1 March 28th, 2010 11:07 am
Look, Scott. I think that you are simply playing deaf. Obama called this an 'health care insurance reform' and though that is partially incorrect since it really doesn't even reform the insurance racket, at least it gets it right about this not even being any reform of health care itself. Don't you get it? I don't want health insurance but want health care coverage. The two are not the same at all, Dude! 'Your' insurance will not get you health care coverage much of the time. Your money (lots of it if you have that) will though, since 'care' has been made into a commodity by the US government controlled by the Big Business community.

Even with health care coverage in this country, you get an abomination and Obama and the Democrats don't even pretend to address that. For one example... do you really want the government to put you into a Big Business run 'nursing home' in a box when you get older? Do you really want the government to guarantee that you be 'treated' (tortured) to death if, God forbid, you came down with incurable cancer? The medical community in the US has no standards hardly, since the care given to you is seen as a commodity on a profit making assembly line. You get about as much quality control as a hamburger does at Wendy's on that assembly line.

Public community health does not exist in the US. It was all privatized and mainly disassembled decades ago. You have the CDC when you really need sick leave guaranteed to sick workers now having to work for minimum wage while ill. You have Planned Parenthood (maybe?) instead of single payer for all health issues being available. There are so many issues here that would fall under real health care reform. However we are talking only about what Obama calls only semi-correctly as 'health insurance reform'. Yes, it is about health insurance. No it is not a reform of even that, but a forced bailout of this racket to be paid for by those who hardly ever benefit form the so-called care that will then be DOLED out to some of them ONLY.

You want to believe in this 'reform' more than a Jesus Freak wants to believe in 'salvation' through Jesus. We just aren't buying your religion though no matter how starry eyed and vacant faced you get about it. Sorry... There just is no Obama, Pal. There just is no 'reform' being made. This plan is a deform of a deformity, not a reform. Get it yet?

To answer your question of .... "Do you think keeping the current healthcare system in place would provide you with better care and benefits than the reform?'

Yes actually I do. I think that from having next to nothing guaranteed by the current situation, that now I will actually have to pay for that next to nothing even more than I already do because of this Deform legislation put into motion by the Democrats. That's sad but exactly how I see the sad situation unfolding. It is a proposal designed to allow the current disintegration of Health Care to hold together by threads yet still longer, by victimizing the working poor even more! How sick is that, Scott?

'If you do, I hope you are wrong. I find it hard to believe so many people know exactly how this all is going to unfold.'

Well nobody does, least of all yourself, Scott. But I think that it is easy to see that the Democrats have advanced nothing of this cause for any of us Working Class folk. Why should they? They are a corporate made party made for the corporate class to act against the rest of us. You don't seem to get that though? This is deform legislation made to help the insurance business stay in operation at our expense.

Both the original article and the discussion about the article and about my response to the article (which is above) are here.

-----------------------
Comments are very much appreciated. Comments are moderated but all comments will be approved except for those that do not belong on Unity-Progress. For example, comments that contain any commercial advertising and ones that contain objectionable hatred will not be approved. Many comments that appear will receive a return comment by Unity-Progress. To comment click the green "comments" link at the bottom of this post. You can also send an email. The email address for Unity-Progress is unity.progress.mail at gmail. Use this address for all communications, including requests for link exchange if you have a good economics or political site.