The Government And Press Both Get Unemployment Wrong

The Labor Department insists that the official unemployment figure is 9.7%. Much of the media says that the government “games” the number and the real number of jobless Americans is 16.8% which includes people who work part-time but would like full-time work and those too discouraged to look at all.Gallup has come up with its own number, which is 20.3%, up from 19.8% in February. These results are based on March interviews with more than 20,000 adults in the U.S. workforce, aged 18 and older. A rise in the percentage of part-timers wanting to work full time (from 9.2% to 9.9%) is responsible for the March increase in underemployment.

“Six in 10 underemployed Americans are not hopeful they will find work or move from part-time to full-time work in the next four weeks. That translates to 12% of the workforce that is both underemployed and not hopeful they will find their desired amount of work.”

Each of these observations from the polling company comes on the heels of a March jobless number which showed the best improvement in three years. The improvement was no improvement at all except in the eyes of a few politicians and statisticians.

Most out of work people are hopeless, bordering on hopeless, or are likely to be hopeless soon.

No one needs a poll to understand that.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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