[ale] Off topic - And now, unemployment

[Sparr]

>>> > We have nearly 10% unemployment. That sounds
>>> > scary. We have better than 90% employment. That's great!
>>> 90% of what?
>> I'm well aware of the numbers that aren't visible, people who are no longer
>> eligible for unemployment are no longer counted as "unemployed" (I think).
>
> By the way, that means one way for the unemployment rate to appear to fall is for the unemployed to stop looking for work and to stop receiving unemployment.  Example: 15,000 out of 100,000 are unemployed, looking for work, and accepting benefits.  Unemployment is 15%.  Overnight 5,000 workers lose their jobs but 11,000 drop off the unemployment benefit rolls.  The unemployment figure is now 9,000 unemployed out of 89,000.  9/89 = 10.11%    Unemployment dropped from 15% to 10% overnight!  The problem is that out of the original 100,000 people, 20,000 are not working.  Yet you don't see a 20% unemployment rate!!  It gets worse: it doesn't account for *under-employed* people.  If someone is flipping burgers at McDrool for 15 hours per week at minimum wage, they are counted as fully employed.  It doesn't matter if they were an engineer making $120,000 a year previous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment#United_States_Bureau_of_Labor_Statistics

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

U3 is the official "unemployment rate", around 10%. U6 is the
statistic that actually matters to those of us who need a job, and is
around 17% right now.