New Column up at Real Money (02/9/05)
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My latest Street.com column, "Rosy Jobs Rate Has Thorny Underside is up at RM. It is loosely based upon Unemployment Rate: Worse than it Appears from earlier this week.
Here's an excerpt:
"But Mr. Greenspan's augmented unemployment rate is hardly the broadest measure of unemployed personnel in the country. For that, we need to go to U-6, found at the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Table A-12, which is the BLS' "alternative measures of labor underutilization." It is the fullest measure of unemployed persons, and it includes those people who have been looking for a job, but unable to secure one -- plus all "marginally attached workers," plus the total "employed part time for economic reasons."
The BLS defines "marginally attached workers" as "persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past." This group includes the so-called "discouraged workers," a subset of the marginally attached. They are defined as having given a "job-market related reason for not currently looking for a job" (i.e., can't find a job, despite looking for one, and then giving up). Last, the BLS defines "persons employed part time for economic reasons" as "those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule."
What is the U-6 measure of unemployment? As of Friday, using January 2005 data, it is 10.2%.
That's a pretty grim statistic . . ."
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Source:
Rosy Jobs Rate Has Thorny Underside
RealMoney.com
2/9/2005 9:30 AM EST
http://www.thestreet.com/p/rmoney/barryritholtz/10208148.html
Wednesday, February 09, 2005 | 08:00 PM | Permalink
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Comments
"That's a pretty grim statistic . . ."
But it's always been a grim statistic. What was it in Jan. of 1997, the start of Clinton's second term 10.4 (not seasonally adjusted like the 10.2).
What was the average difference between the reported unemployment rate and the U-6 during Clinton's last 6 years 1995-2000: 3.73
What was during Bush's first term? 3.86
Is that significant?
Posted by: Dave S. | Feb 11, 2005 10:39:39 AM
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