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You may have seen the recent headline \”Real US unemployment rate at 16 pct: Fed official. A snippet:

\”If one considers the people who would like a job but have stopped looking — so-called discouraged workers — and those who are working fewer hours than they want, the unemployment rate would move from the official 9.4 percent to 16 percent, said Atlanta Fed chief Dennis Lockhart.

UPDATE: Commentor Tom M. takes note that Mr. Lockhart is probably refering to the U6 numbers and this fact was simply not reported appropriately. He says:

When economists, such as myself, talk about the “real” unemployment rate, we are usually referring to the U6 unemployment figure, which is the U3 rate (the published/official rate) plus people that are “part time for economic reasons” among other groups.

If that is the case, it makes most of the rest of what I have to say pretty much void, but I\’ll leave it up anyway. Thanks Tom!

A little while back, I called \”discouraged workers\” the \”despair numbers\” (basically, they say they want a job, but they aren\’t looking for one).

My conclusion was that we\’ve always had despair or discouraged workers, so suddenly adding them in now seems like a dishonest tactic to artificially inflate unemployment to some scary level. In good times, we saw unemployment at about 4-5%, so we\’re used to thinking about that range as being good. But if you add the \”discouraged workers\” in those good times, you\’re looking at a \”good\” unemployment rate of about 7-8%.

As for the \”wants to work more hours\” crowd, I\’m open to considering that group in some way, shape or form, but I don\’t know how to add them in a way that is honest. Frankly, as a small business owner and contractor, I don\’t work as many hours as I would like. But I don\’t go around calling myself \”unemployed\” or even \”underemployed\”.

If you look at the Bureau of Labor\’s stats on part time workers, you can see that the number has jumped about 3 million in the past year. If we add those workers plus the increase in the \”discouraged workers\” (about 1 million), we get a rate a little over 12%.

But the problem in my mind is that you can\’t simply add part time workers to the \”unemployed\” list to get any kind of meaningful data. Maybe, for the sake of argumentation, you could could cast an involuntary part time worker as half a worker. Then the unemployment rate is a shade over 11%. This is, I think, a not-unreasonable number to use, given that it shaves off the standard number of \”discouraged workers\” and uses a dampening variable to account for the fact that part-time workers aren\’t really \”unemployed\”, but \”underemployed\”.

But I could be easily convinced that crunching the numbers in a new and interesting way is basically statistical cheating and we should just use the standard definitions.

Overall, I\’m really uncomfortable with the whole \”let\’s crunch the numbers so the situation look really terrible\” methodology because all it does is try to cast the current situation in a bad light by changing the metric. But you can\’t use one metric in the good times and another metric in the bad times.

As such, I think the 16% number is really more of a scare tactic than anything else.

You may have seen the recent headline \”Real US unemployment rate at 16 pct: Fed official. A snippet:

\”If one considers the people who would like a job but have stopped looking — so-called discouraged workers — and those who are working fewer hours than they want, the unemployment rate would move from the official 9.4 percent to 16 percent, said Atlanta Fed chief Dennis Lockhart.

UPDATE: Commentor Tom M. takes note that Mr. Lockhart is probably refering to the U6 numbers and this fact was simply not reported appropriately. He says:

When economists, such as myself, talk about the “real” unemployment rate, we are usually referring to the U6 unemployment figure, which is the U3 rate (the published/official rate) plus people that are “part time for economic reasons” among other groups.

If that is the case, it makes most of the rest of what I have to say pretty much void, but I\’ll leave it up anyway. Thanks Tom!

A little while back, I called \”discouraged workers\” the \”despair numbers\” (basically, they say they want a job, but they aren\’t looking for one).

My conclusion was that we\’ve always had despair or discouraged workers, so suddenly adding them in now seems like a dishonest tactic to artificially inflate unemployment to some scary level. In good times, we saw unemployment at about 4-5%, so we\’re used to thinking about that range as being good. But if you add the \”discouraged workers\” in those good times, you\’re looking at a \”good\” unemployment rate of about 7-8%.

As for the \”wants to work more hours\” crowd, I\’m open to considering that group in some way, shape or form, but I don\’t know how to add them in a way that is honest. Frankly, as a small business owner and contractor, I don\’t work as many hours as I would like. But I don\’t go around calling myself \”unemployed\” or even \”underemployed\”.

If you look at the Bureau of Labor\’s stats on part time workers, you can see that the number has jumped about 3 million in the past year. If we add those workers plus the increase in the \”discouraged workers\” (about 1 million), we get a rate a little over 12%.

But the problem in my mind is that you can\’t simply add part time workers to the \”unemployed\” list to get any kind of meaningful data. Maybe, for the sake of argumentation, you could could cast an involuntary part time worker as half a worker. Then the unemployment rate is a shade over 11%. This is, I think, a not-unreasonable number to use, given that it shaves off the standard number of \”discouraged workers\” and uses a dampening variable to account for the fact that part-time workers aren\’t really \”unemployed\”, but \”underemployed\”.

But I could be easily convinced that crunching the numbers in a new and interesting way is basically statistical cheating and we should just use the standard definitions.

Overall, I\’m really uncomfortable with the whole \”let\’s crunch the numbers so the situation look really terrible\” methodology because all it does is try to cast the current situation in a bad light by changing the metric. But you can\’t use one metric in the good times and another metric in the bad times.

As such, I think the 16% number is really more of a scare tactic than anything else.

You may have seen the recent headline \”Real US unemployment rate at 16 pct: Fed official. A snippet:

\”If one considers the people who would like a job but have stopped looking — so-called discouraged workers — and those who are working fewer hours than they want, the unemployment rate would move from the official 9.4 percent to 16 percent, said Atlanta Fed chief Dennis Lockhart.

UPDATE: Commentor Tom M. takes note that Mr. Lockhart is probably refering to the U6 numbers and this fact was simply not reported appropriately. He says:

When economists, such as myself, talk about the “real” unemployment rate, we are usually referring to the U6 unemployment figure, which is the U3 rate (the published/official rate) plus people that are “part time for economic reasons” among other groups.

If that is the case, it makes most of the rest of what I have to say pretty much void, but I\’ll leave it up anyway. Thanks Tom!

A little while back, I called \”discouraged workers\” the \”despair numbers\” (basically, they say they want a job, but they aren\’t looking for one).

My conclusion was that we\’ve always had despair or discouraged workers, so suddenly adding them in now seems like a dishonest tactic to artificially inflate unemployment to some scary level. In good times, we saw unemployment at about 4-5%, so we\’re used to thinking about that range as being good. But if you add the \”discouraged workers\” in those good times, you\’re looking at a \”good\” unemployment rate of about 7-8%.

As for the \”wants to work more hours\” crowd, I\’m open to considering that group in some way, shape or form, but I don\’t know how to add them in a way that is honest. Frankly, as a small business owner and contractor, I don\’t work as many hours as I would like. But I don\’t go around calling myself \”unemployed\” or even \”underemployed\”.

If you look at the Bureau of Labor\’s stats on part time workers, you can see that the number has jumped about 3 million in the past year. If we add those workers plus the increase in the \”discouraged workers\” (about 1 million), we get a rate a little over 12%.

But the problem in my mind is that you can\’t simply add part time workers to the \”unemployed\” list to get any kind of meaningful data. Maybe, for the sake of argumentation, you could could cast an involuntary part time worker as half a worker. Then the unemployment rate is a shade over 11%. This is, I think, a not-unreasonable number to use, given that it shaves off the standard number of \”discouraged workers\” and uses a dampening variable to account for the fact that part-time workers aren\’t really \”unemployed\”, but \”underemployed\”.

But I could be easily convinced that crunching the numbers in a new and interesting way is basically statistical cheating and we should just use the standard definitions.

Overall, I\’m really uncomfortable with the whole \”let\’s crunch the numbers so the situation look really terrible\” methodology because all it does is try to cast the current situation in a bad light by changing the metric. But you can\’t use one metric in the good times and another metric in the bad times.

As such, I think the 16% number is really more of a scare tactic than anything else.

You may have seen the recent headline \”Real US unemployment rate at 16 pct: Fed official. A snippet:

\”If one considers the people who would like a job but have stopped looking — so-called discouraged workers — and those who are working fewer hours than they want, the unemployment rate would move from the official 9.4 percent to 16 percent, said Atlanta Fed chief Dennis Lockhart.

UPDATE: Commentor Tom M. takes note that Mr. Lockhart is probably refering to the U6 numbers and this fact was simply not reported appropriately. He says:

When economists, such as myself, talk about the “real” unemployment rate, we are usually referring to the U6 unemployment figure, which is the U3 rate (the published/official rate) plus people that are “part time for economic reasons” among other groups.

If that is the case, it makes most of the rest of what I have to say pretty much void, but I\’ll leave it up anyway. Thanks Tom!

A little while back, I called \”discouraged workers\” the \”despair numbers\” (basically, they say they want a job, but they aren\’t looking for one).

My conclusion was that we\’ve always had despair or discouraged workers, so suddenly adding them in now seems like a dishonest tactic to artificially inflate unemployment to some scary level. In good times, we saw unemployment at about 4-5%, so we\’re used to thinking about that range as being good. But if you add the \”discouraged workers\” in those good times, you\’re looking at a \”good\” unemployment rate of about 7-8%.

As for the \”wants to work more hours\” crowd, I\’m open to considering that group in some way, shape or form, but I don\’t know how to add them in a way that is honest. Frankly, as a small business owner and contractor, I don\’t work as many hours as I would like. But I don\’t go around calling myself \”unemployed\” or even \”underemployed\”.

If you look at the Bureau of Labor\’s stats on part time workers, you can see that the number has jumped about 3 million in the past year. If we add those workers plus the increase in the \”discouraged workers\” (about 1 million), we get a rate a little over 12%.

But the problem in my mind is that you can\’t simply add part time workers to the \”unemployed\” list to get any kind of meaningful data. Maybe, for the sake of argumentation, you could could cast an involuntary part time worker as half a worker. Then the unemployment rate is a shade over 11%. This is, I think, a not-unreasonable number to use, given that it shaves off the standard number of \”discouraged workers\” and uses a dampening variable to account for the fact that part-time workers aren\’t really \”unemployed\”, but \”underemployed\”.

But I could be easily convinced that crunching the numbers in a new and interesting way is basically statistical cheating and we should just use the standard definitions.

Overall, I\’m really uncomfortable with the whole \”let\’s crunch the numbers so the situation look really terrible\” methodology because all it does is try to cast the current situation in a bad light by changing the metric. But you can\’t use one metric in the good times and another metric in the bad times.

As such, I think the 16% number is really more of a scare tactic than anything else.