David Leonhart reminds us that
The national unemployment rate has risen to 9.5 percent, the highest level in more than a quarter-century. Yet it still excludes all those who have given up looking for a job and those part-time workers who want to be working full time.
And let's not forget that the unemployment figures also do not include small business owners whose businesses either are not supporting them with adequate income or who have had to close up shop.
Mind you, this has always been the case. Only those eligible for unemployment benefits are counted as "unemployed". This leaves out ...
- the underemployed
- starving small-biz owners
- the homeless
- the long-term unemployed whose benefits have expired
During good times, perhaps these four groups of people are a very small proportion of the working (or wish-I-were-working) public. But during hard times like these I would think the percentage is signifcant since far more people might, for example, need to fold their business, or not be able to secure new employment before their benefits run out.
The Obama administration has begun creating "real" budgets by throwing out the bag of tricks that has been used in the past to make overly optimistic projections. This was a good and important change. Now it's time to start providing us with "real" unemployment figures. I'd wager it's around 15 percent now and climbing.
No comments:
Post a Comment