Astounding numbers

Today the government announced new unemployment numbers: the "official" rate quoted in the press is 7.6%. In a previous post I explained that this number is the index "U3" and that the government itself produces the broadest index of unemployment "U6" (unemployed and underemployed) which is almost twice the value of the U3 index (it's 13.9% today). Also, at ShadowStats economist John Williams produces corrected statistics that remove the dishonest and misleading manipulations our government makes in the numbers to disguise its continuing economic failures. His recomputed value for U6 is now 18%. For comparison, I provide a link below to the BLS summary data about unemployment during the Great Depression.

The BLS reports that the average unemployment rate for 1931 was 15.9%. If you were unemployed in 1931 but wanted a job, you are included in the data. Today, the government excludes millions of unemployed people that it magisterially declares "out of the economy" because they are very long-term unemployed and simply can't find work; our government doesn't think that these people matter, so it takes a cue from Orwell and effectively redefines them as "unpersons." John Williams doesn't play that game, and he removes these falsehoods from the data to produce honest, reliable numbers. (By the way, he doesn't do this for free; he has many business clients who use his data for planning because among businessmen the government numbers are known to be worthless.) So here we are: America workers today are in worse shape than those in 1931, and the situation continues to deteriorate.

View ShadowStats data here

View Great Depression BLS data here

For the brave, the U1-U6 index data:

View BLS U1-U6 here

Note: The actual, unadjusted value of U6 is 15.4%; the "seasonally adjusted" value of 13.9% is an attempt to average things like temporary employment spikes during Christmas. Whatever the values, our government doesn't care about millions of unemployed and underemployed people; their lives and welfare don't matter. A government that callous is a government that does not deserve to survive and in the long term won't survive.