Unemployed

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

It has been declared that health care must be deficit neutral; and Social Security, Medicare, and other entitlements must be cut or they will destroy the country.   Yet, somehow, there is always ample money for bank bailouts, wars, and tax cuts.  

So as Washington pisses away trillions of our dollars, millions of Americans are experiencing a financial crisis unprecedented by anything since the Great Depression.   And just like Katrina, they are being left to fend for themselves.  

 

The official measure of unemployment is U-3 and only includes all underutilized jobless persons who are available to take a job and have actively sought work in the past four weeks.

Six alternative measures of labor underutilization are available on a monthly basis for the United States as a whole. They are published in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly Employment Situationnews release.  The six state measures are based on the same definitions as those published for the U.S. and are defined as follows:

U-1: persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force;

U-2: job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force;

U-3: total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (this is the definition used for the official unemployment rate);

U-4: total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers;

U-5: total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other marginally attached workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers; and

U-6: total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers.

Here are the alternative measures of labor underutilization by state, fourth quarter of 2008 through third quarter of 2009.

Michigan registered the highest 4-quarter average rates for all six measures, including an unemployment rate of 12.6 percent and a U-6 of 20.9 percent. The states with the next highest unemployment rates were Oregon, 11.2 percent; Rhode Island, 10.7 percent; South Carolina, 10.6 percent; and California, 10.4 percent. North Dakota recorded the lowest rates for all six measures,  1.1 2.1 3.9 4.1 4.6 7.5

People are losing their homes and filing bankruptcy in record numbers.   The state welfare offices are unable to keep up with the influx of people who have run out of unemployment, savings, health care, home, family, and friends.  

Why is it that the peoples’ programs and safety nets are over regulated and nickle and dimed to death, while the war lords and bankers have full and unregulated access to all of our money and credit cards?

crossposted