America's hidden unemployed: too discouraged to count

[No Elephants]

America's hidden unemployed: too discouraged to count

<snip>

Economists, analyzing government data, estimate about 4 million fewer people are in the labor force than in December 2007, primarily due to a lack of jobs rather than the normal aging of America's population. The size of the shift underscores the severity of the jobs crisis.

If all those so-called discouraged jobseekers had remained in the labor force, August's jobless rate of 8.1 percent would have been 10.5 percent.

The jobs crisis spurred the Federal Reserve last week to launch a new bond-buying program and promise to keep it running until the labor market improves. It also poses a challenge to President Barack Obama's re-election bid.

The labor force participation rate, or the proportion of working-age Americans who have a job or are looking for one has fallen by an unprecedented 2.5 percentage points since December 2007, slumping to a 31-year low of 63.5 percent.(Additional reporting by Jilian Mincer in New York; writing by Lucia Mutikani; editing by William Schomberg)

Much more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/26/us-eurozone-protests-idUSBRE88P18A20120926

I've had a couple of extended discussions at DU about whether the monthly unemployment numbers showed the full picture.

Wonder what the people who insisted they did would think of this article.

P.S. Remember, the way that the numbers are reported now is very different from the way they were reported during the Depression.

Had there been no change, my guess is that 8.1% would convert to at least 22%.


Happy Days Are Here Again!

[Enthusiast]

1. Losing a job is the most demoralizing thing there is.

At least it was for me.

[No Elephants]

3. I am so sorry that it happened to you and that it had that effect on you.

Blessings.

[Divine Discontent]

2. definitely 1 in 5 out of work... sad to say. Obama is trying, the GOP doens't want to help, but,

I question his choice not to get out and hammer them as anti-American politicos who are hellbent only on defeating him, and leaving your families and friends in poverty and hopelessness! I think he should have taken a harsher tone against the tea bag nuts when they started fighting the jobs bills during the near depression's start.

[No Elephants]

4. Yes, but I question his whole financial team and his financial policies, too.

When George Bush was re-elected, he got something like 50.02% of the popular vote. He started talking about how he had political capital.

Obama got elected with more of the popular vote and as much goodwill from media as any Democrat was going to get. We were in such bad shape and Americans were pulling for him to get the country back on track.

He had something available to him that FDR never had, namely the roadmap that FDR had created, almost out of thin air.

Moreover, FDR had already knocked down a huge obstacle that, because of FDR, Obama never had to face.

FDR got the SCOTUS to say that the federal government had all kinds of powers under the commerce clause, but only after the SCOTUS had declared unconstitutional one attempt by FDR and Congress to get us out of the Depression after another. So, FDR did not only have to consult experts and get bills written and then get them through Congress, he had been stymied at every turn by the SCOTUS after each bill got passed.

FDR made a critical mistake, though: When the Republicans started screaming about spending, he blinked and started to back away from his own convictions. And then, only World War II saved the economy.

Trouble is, wars don't seem to help our economy in modern times, only injure it, unless you own stock in a military contractor. (Betch a hundred emoticons that a lot of Congresscritters have those stocks in their "blind" trusts.)

And Obama appointed or re-appointed Republicans to be in charge of our economy, including Bernanke, who claims to be an expert on the Great Depression.


We're screwed.