Last week new jobless claims jumped higher than expected: 626,000, up from the already grim estimate of 591,000. Just one month! Add in a similar amount of job losses the month before, and we're talking something like 1.2 million jobs lost in a mere 60 days. That's 20,000 lay-offs per day! Tell me again that we're not in a depression.
On this sour note, I want to air a personal gripe about the stupid reporting we read concerning unemployment. For some dumb reason, journalists persist in reporting a deliberately understated number called "U3" as the actual unemployment rate when it most certainly is not. As a reminder, the government publishes unemployment rates in 6 indexes called U1, U2, U3, U4, U5, and U6. You can read details about these indexes here. U6 is the comprehensive index that represents total unemployment and underemployment. This number is currently almost twice the value of U3, and it is most certainly the number that should be reported in the press because it clearly shows the miserable state we are now in. According to U6, the unemployment/underemployment rate in the US is now about 14%. John Williams at ShadowStats adds in several millions of very long-term unemployed that were finagled out of Bureau of Labor Statistics during the Clinton administration to arrive at a total figure of more than 17%. You would agree that this figure is substantially greater than the "official" rate of about 7.5% incessantly quoted in the press. You would agree that while 7.5% is bad, 14% (or 17%) is appalling. A nation with so much unemployment and underemployment (and both increase each day) is in desperate trouble.
Why can't we get the truth about our current situation? How can we deal with our problems if we can't even get reliable information about them? Why is the press serving us so badly in these grim times? Newspapers and journalists are suffering big losses and big layoffs nowadays; considering the reams of disinformation they feed us, I'd say they're getting exactly what they deserve.
Read it here
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