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Published Letters: 41
C'mon.
"According to official statistics, the unemployment rate in the United States is now 9.8 percent. But those statistics understate the severity of the jobs crisis. The official statistics do not include the 875,000 Americans who have given up looking for work, even though they want jobs. When these "marginally attached" workers and part-time workers are added to the officially unemployed, the result, according to another, broader governement measure of unemployment known as "U-6," is shocking. The United States has an unemployment rate of 17 percent."
So, looking a little deeper at the math:
17 - 9.8% = 7.2% of the population estimated to be jobless or part-time.
Now, US Bureau of labor (ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat1.txt) says we have a workforce of somewhere between 154 and 155 million people. 7.2% of that and we're looking at 1,1088,000 to 11,160,000 people, 875,000 of which have given up looking for work. The rest are part timers.
Of those part timers, how many are actually working part time but wanting full time employment? The author doesn't say. He has packed in his 875,000 people and packed them in with less than full time workers who may be perfectly content working part time right now (students, work-at-home folks, parents, etc.), in order to inflate his percentage of "unemployed."
Times are bad enough we don't need to exaggerate in order to scare people into whatever snake oil your selling.
11,088,000 to 11,160,000 people.
