True Unemployment at 17 Percent

The official unemployment number sits at 9.8% (Berman Post: Unemployment Rises to 9.8 Percent). Unemployment numbers do not take into account people who have stopped looking for work. This does make some logical sense; you can not blame a bad economy for someone no working if they do not want to work. This logic breaks down when you consider that someone people may not be looking for work not because they do not want to, but because they feel it pointless. If we include people that are excluded from the official numbers, the unemployment rate would be 17%.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Jobless-rate-reaches-98-apf-93159528.html?x=0

"If laid-off workers who have settled for part-time work or have given up looking for new jobs are included, the unemployment rate rose to 17 percent, the highest on records dating from 1994.

All told, 15.1 million Americans are now out of work, the department said. And 7.2 million jobs have been eliminated since the recession began in December 2007."

To put the official numbers in context of the graph used to pitch the stimulus;

Picture embedded below. (from http://michaelscomments.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/september-unemployment-the-job-loss-accelerates)



By the administrations own numbers/projections, we are worse off then we would have been if the stimulus had not been passed.