The Bureau of Labor Statistics re-organized their website, and it took me an extra four minutes to find out what the unemployment rate was for July.
Why would a re-organization slow down finding that info? Because I do not look for the “headline” or U3 measure of unemployment. I look for the “broad” or U6 measure, which takes into account those “marginally attached” to the labor force as well as those working part time who would rather be working full time.
You might not have ever seen these figures, so I’m going to try to copy the whole table, if it works … lessee, View/PageSource … uh … search for <table … copy, paste … come back to Docudharma … OK, here goes nothing …
Series Id: LNS13327709 | |||||||||||||
| Year | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Annual |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1998 | 8.4 | 8.4 | 8.4 | 7.9 | 7.9 | 8.0 | 8.1 | 7.9 | 7.9 | 7.8 | 7.6 | 7.6 | |
| 1999 | 7.7 | 7.7 | 7.6 | 7.6 | 7.4 | 7.5 | 7.5 | 7.3 | 7.4 | 7.2 | 7.1 | 7.1 | |
| 2000 | 7.1 | 7.2 | 7.1 | 6.9 | 7.1 | 7.0 | 7.0 | 7.1 | 7.0 | 6.8 | 7.1 | 6.9 | |
| 2001 | 7.3 | 7.4 | 7.3 | 7.4 | 7.5 | 7.9 | 7.8 | 8.1 | 8.7 | 9.3 | 9.4 | 9.6 | |
| 2002 | 9.5 | 9.5 | 9.4 | 9.7 | 9.5 | 9.5 | 9.6 | 9.6 | 9.6 | 9.6 | 9.7 | 9.8 | |
| 2003 | 10.0 | 10.2 | 10.0 | 10.2 | 10.1 | 10.3 | 10.3 | 10.1 | 10.4 | 10.2 | 10.0 | 9.8 | |
| 2004 | 9.9 | 9.7 | 10.0 | 9.6 | 9.6 | 9.5 | 9.5 | 9.4 | 9.4 | 9.7 | 9.4 | 9.3 | |
| 2005 | 9.3 | 9.3 | 9.2 | 9.0 | 8.9 | 9.0 | 8.8 | 8.8 | 9.0 | 8.7 | 8.7 | 8.6 | |
| 2006 | 8.4 | 8.4 | 8.2 | 8.1 | 8.2 | 8.4 | 8.5 | 8.4 | 8.0 | 8.2 | 8.0 | 7.9 | |
| 2007 | 8.3 | 8.1 | 8.0 | 8.2 | 8.3 | 8.3 | 8.3 | 8.4 | 8.4 | 8.4 | 8.4 | 8.8 | |
| 2008 | 9.0 | 8.9 | 9.1 | 9.2 | 9.7 | 9.9 | 10.3 | ||||||
Yoopie! It Worked!
Now, this is seasonally adjusted … unadjusted given below (the figures are worse in summer and better at Christmas) …
Yup, even though GDP was up by a “healthy 1.9%” last quarter … broad unemployment rose from 9.1% before the start of 08Q2 to 9.9% at the end of 08Q2 … and July is up to 10.3%.
And, no, you won’t read these figures in the newspaper … newspapers go by the press release, they do not go looking for the alternate measures (maybe if they did, the alternate measures would be even harder to find).