When you think about having a job, the logical person would consider that a situation where you were making enough money to pay your bills, and maybe save a bit. Anything less is not real employment. And by that measure, our unemployment figure is more than 15 percent.
So, each month, the media does a pathetic job in reporting unemployment figures–and today is no different. The New York Times:
The American economy shed another 663,000 jobs in March, the government reported Friday, bringing the toll of job losses during the recession to more than 5 million.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the national unemployment rate climbed to 8.5 percent from 8.1 percent in February, its highest levels in a quarter-century, as employers raced to cut their payroll costs. It was the 15th consecutive month of job losses.
How does the lazy-ass reporter arrive at that figure? Well, he simply rewrites the first paragraph of the Department of Labor’s press release:
Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline sharply in March (-663,000), and the unemployment rate rose from 8.1 to 8.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Since the recession began in December 2007, 5.1 million jobs have been lost, with almost two-thirds (3.3 million) of the decrease occurring in the last 5 months. In March, job losses were large and widespread across the major industry sectors.
But, if that reporter bothered to go a bit further–like read the actual tables attached the press release–he would find this Table A-12, which is euphemistically called "Alternative measures of labor underutilization"…in English that means another way of actually looking at how bad the employment situation is. Here’s what that measure looks at:
Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers
Which essentially is the picture of economic misery in America today. In the footnote (yes, can you imagine a reporter reading a footnote, let alone a table?), the report explains that:
Marginally attached workers are 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….Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule.
In other words, the economy is not providing decent jobs for people who want to work.
15.6 percent of the people in this country effectively do not have work that pays enough money to survive. That’s almost double the number being tossed around.
I did find an exception: kudos to The Wall Street Journal for this:
The unemployment rate, which is calculated using a survey of households as opposed to companies, jumped 0.4 percentage point to 8.5%, the highest since November 1983. In its latest report on the U.S. economy, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said it expects the jobless rate to reach 10.5% by the end of next year.
By broader measures, the labor market is already there, and then some. When marginally attached and involuntary part-time workers are included, the rate of unemployed or underemployed workers hit 15.6% last month, up from 14.8% in February and more than six percentage points higher than it was one year ago. [emphasis added]
Though it was down a bit in the story.
The bottom line is this: we have to demand that the press start working a little harder to tell the full story of the misery in America. And that the elected leadership level with the people.
