According to Broader Unemployment Figures 17% of Americans are Jobless--and soon even higher

According to Broader Unemployment Figures 17% of Americans are Jobless

By Kevin Anthony Stoda

According to early reports this October, “The government's broader measure [of unemployment], known as the 'U-6' for its data classification, hit 17% in September, 0.2 percentage points higher than August.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/10/02/broader-unemployment-rate-hits-17-in-september/

According to the Wall Street Journal report on September statistics in the USA, “Most forecasters expect the official unemployment rate to top 10% by the end of this year, and the broader rate could easily top 18%. For people in this group, comparisons to the Great Depression (when 25% of Americans were out of work) may not look so wild even if overall economic activity is holding up better.”

One critique of the Wall Street Journal article wrote as follows, ”If you add the long term unemployed and many people who are just unreachable for polling, the Bureau of Labor Statistical methods has it's limits and constraints. Real unemployment is easily in the neighborhood of 20%. The economy moves on but many in the US population have been locked out of work and prosperity. This is the major marker or characteristic of the 1929 Depression (1929-1945).”

I am not nearly that pessimistic.

I do, however, firmly believe that this current depression (recession if you will) is already worse than the one faced in the early Reagan era—1981 to 1984. In those years, it was hard for college-student-aged and high-school-aged persons in the USA to find work, too, but not as difficult as it was in the summer of 2009. (I was one of those students in the 1980s who was affected in my job searches but I found seasonal work. From what I see now, it is even harder to even come up with seasonal part-time work according to USA summer jobless rates among young peoples.)

The difference between 1983 and now is that more sectors and counties of America are affected than then. The rustbelt states were taking it more on the chin than the rest of the USA back then. In 1983, 40-plus percent of the black male population in urban centers like Chicago could not get work.

However, now in 2009, many more regions—including rural, semi-urban, and urban demographic regions around America are running real unemployment (beyond the U-6 indicator) between 20 and 45%. These figures would include many independent contractors, who are not controlled for in government figures to date.

Without a doubt, the only organization getting a boon from this unemployment situation in the depressed USA is the Department of Defense, where recruitment of soldier-targets were achieved recently for the first time in decades. “In announcing the milestone, the Pentagon said the nation's worst economic crisis since the Great Depression played a key role in boosting enlistments. Senior Pentagon official Curtis Gilroy said a ten percent increase in the national unemployment rate generally translates into a four to six percent improvement in recruiting goals. Another top official, Bill Carr, called the recession ‘a force,' adding, ‘unemployment allowed us to be for much of the year in a very favorable position.'

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/15/headlines#17