The U.S. unemployment numbers are out today, and most headlines will show that the U.S. unemployment rate in November was 10.0 percent, down from 10.2 percent in October. That number is depressingly large, but even that under-counts the true number of unemployed. For instance, it doesn’t count those people who don’t have a job and have given up looking for one, or those who have found marginal part-time work but still can’t make ends meet and are still looking for a full-time job.
The government keeps stats on all of these “marginally attached workers” and people “employed part time for economic reasons” (rather than by choice). If you add all of those people in, the total unemployment rate in the U.S. is 17.2 percent, compared to 12.6 percent a year ago. The only good news is that number is down from 17.5 percent in October.
To explain all of this (and I guess to remind people why it’s important to budget in these trying times), the folks at Mint prepared the video below. Despite its attempt to be lighthearted, it’s probably the most depressing cartoon you’ll see all month.
Man, that WAS depressing. The worst part is that this cartoon is probably more realistic than what we are actually hearing.
Have they been using the same calculations all along or is it different now that it’s been in the past. Say, compared to the Great Depression. Just curious.
It’s always been like this, at least the last few decades (I’m not sure about during the great depression).
All you have remember is that the unemployment rate is an economic INDICATOR. Much like the Dow it’s an number that alone means nothing, but when compared to its history it can be used as an economic barometer.
The unemployment rate went down, just like the number of real unemployed people went down. They’re not the same number but they generally move together (again like the 30 Dow Jones companies move in time with the entire market).
Agreed, it’s sad how quickly people began losing there jobs many without notice/hint from the company, and those use to working and supporting themselves with a certain budget dramatically slashing that budget and working for minimum wage are losing their homes!
And on regions like Detroit , this rate is close to 25%. Even then we have Dow Jones above 10,000 !!!
Stocks are one of the safer bets rght now, think about it, the large COs are established and all they needed to do was to shed enough costs to keep their expenses in line with lower revenues and now that we are hitting the low point at which point they will start posting greater than expected gains. A lot of people got to buy their shares at very low prices and will do pretty well over time, some might have laso lost a fortune and will just break even.
Now compare that to their other investment choices, in normal times they would have been weighing stocks, bonds, etc.. against investing in the other huge chunck of our economy, small businesses, startups, etc… and you begin to realize this investment choice would have been a risky investment at these times at minimum as it would be really hard to tell which smaller COs could survive.
I am not surprised at all about the Dow at 10,000 at this point in the economic cycle.
Higher than France’s unemployment…Damn what the hell is going on?
We have exactly the same way to count unemployment in France. With 5 categories (A,B,C…). It’s a standard in every OECD countries, it was defined by ILO (International Labour Organization).
We have the exact same figures as USA : just above 10% in category “A” and 17.5% when you add category B and C.
wow.
Mint’s users are not representative of US population. There are some psychographic and other factors that can not be controlled for, even if you rebalance their sample on socio-demographic characteristics. What their numbers really show is that the unemployement rates among Internet-savvy people with interest in finance are higher than for the general population.
What a big ‘ol brain you have there.
I lol’d
Durrr durrrr he’s smarter than me and he made a good point. Let’s throw feces at him durrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
Sound like you’ve been spendin’ too much time on ol’ FarmVille!
Are you serious? The government also releases figures for all the rest of the categories they refer to in the Mint article. There is no need for them to have used any data from their users to produce that cartoon, you can find any business section in any reputable paper in the country and they’ll tell you the exact same number, 17.2%.
But hey, I like all the multisyllabic words!
The unemployment rate Mint cites is not based on Mint’s users. It’s a number that includes the chronically unemployed, etc.
way to fail? this doesn’t have anything to do with Mint users. No one said it did, nor even implied such. You seem to have just made that up… the quoted numbers are all federal BLS stats.
or that its mostly unemployed that have time tidy up their finances on mint. The rest of us are doing overtime with paycuts with barely enough time to sleep
@modernmetrix The video above and the numbers used aren’t being taken from Mint’s numbers; they’re being taken from the Bureau of Labor Statistics; these numbers are publicly available at http://www.bls.gov/
Cheers!
Here’s another link from BLS to show exactly where Mint got their numbers. See the “totals” for Nov 2009 on the bottom, right-hand side: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm
hahahahaha you’re obviously a sociology major. kudos for picking words out of your textbook’s glossary.
Most Americans believe the 10% rate to be “People without a job who are looking for a job” Every time this comes up in discussion I try to explain why 10% is bullshit, people don’t understand that our government lies to us on a daily basis.
Unemployment isn’t the only bogus government statistic.
http://shadowstats.com
Don’t blame it all on the government. At least they’ve been consistent in their definition. Don’t forget to factor in the population’s ignorance. We all learned the definition of unemployment in econ 101. I guess a lot of people forgot.
To put this in context, it would be good to know what the true unemployment rate (including “marginally attached and part-time workers) was going back the last 5 years. In that way we can see if the percentage shift over the last few years, when compared to the traditional government fuzzy number, is the same.
you can find those numbers at http://www.bls.gov
Thanks! I found the chart for 1994-2008. There seems fairly consistent relationship between the “official” numbers and the alternative/real measure.
Regardless, this is pretty bad.
http://www.bls.gov/opub/ils/pdf/opbils67.pdf
Jesus. I feel like I’ve been lied to. 17.2 is extremely high. This cartoon needs to be on the worldwide news… people need to know this information.
http://www.wavenut.com
Why would people in other countries care?
yeah we’re all dealing with our own problems. fortunately we dropped .3% unemployment this month and created 80k jobs…although i wish i could get a good job. no one wants to hire students.
Hate to be a stickler but ‘canceled’ has two ‘ll’s. Also, assuming this data is collected via survey, if you don’t glance at the Wanted ads once a week so that you can answer the ‘are you looking for work?’ question ‘yes’, then come on…
I think 2 ‘l’s is the British way of spelling it. 1 ‘l’ is the way Americans spell it. You can use either (I like 2 ‘l’s personally) but it’s like ‘color’ vs. ‘colour’.
Actually, canceled and cancelled are both technically correct. The former is considered an American version and the latter a British version of English.
Exactly! Its going to get much worse and won’t be changing for the next 8 years.
*rolls eyes*
The numbers have always been cooked like this for years, this is not news, the people reading this board are just slightly more informed about reality than they were a few minutes ago.
The world itself is the same as it has always been. Things aren’t getting worse, they’re not really getting better, life just goes on.
The only reason people are all doom and gloom about it is because fear gets attention. Things start getting a little better and people have to turn it into bad news. If we had been monitoring real unemployment numbers since the Regan years or whenever the government decided to sugar coat this today would still be a good day because overall unemployment dropped 0.3% from 30 days ago.
First time since Dec 2007 that we’ve moved in a positive direction.
Be happy, things are getting better.
Woah! Ironically funny..
They put this video together pretty damn quick.
I bet they just had to add the most up to date numbers when it was released.
The great depression for startups is more scary ……it will never end. Tech innovation and effeciency will forever shed workers.
Here is the link to what the BLS describes as “Alternative measures of labor underutilization.”
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm
and here is a link describing the difference between the 1930s and now.
http://tlrii.typepad.com/theliscioreport/2009/01/calculating-the-unemployment-rate.html
Just to clarify my first link is exactly where Mint.com got its data from the the 10% number is U3, and the 17% number Mint is using is U6. Enjoy!
tech unemployment in the bay area is around 5% for degreed or skilled workers, the rest are non-degreed/ non skilled.
I surmise it is the minimum wage increase of 2007 that is currently maxing out.
I also bet you didn’t know that a SWE with 1 years experience is to be paid 75k minimum base in California, this and other silly ideas are a significant part of the problem.
Doesn’t SF have extremely high housing/renting prices though? If I was a software in the midwest, I’d think $45-50k is a decent starting out salary…but rent would probably be like $500-700 in most places. In SF/NY/LA I’ve seen average rent prices at like $2k/mo.
The only reason high wages exist in those areas are because things like housing/commuting/parking/food/etc. are outrageous also (and therefore the pay must match the higher costs).
Plus, programming isn’t something an average joe can learn quickly — I say pay people good wages for those harder to learn jobs.
Calling “base pay” a “silly idea” without referencing cost of living, cost of acquisition, employee ROI, etc is a pretty silly idea in and of itself. Are said $75k employees in northern CA where the median house value is $450,000 or in southern CA where it’s more like $250,000? Is that 1 year of experience out of Stanford and an internship at Google, or out of high school with PTE at Starbucks?
Swap “northern” and “southern” in my comment there… $450k median house value in southern CA, not northern!
My understanding it’s 1 year of of programming experience.
I have hired college grads for a lot more then that out of top tier schools, but those are hardcore computer science programs that IMO are equivalent to a couple of year experience in most shops.. But everyone is not like that and for the state to step in a direct that evaluation is not right.
the depressing thing is, it could have gone farther:
it could have gone farther too…
contestant 5: same as contestant 4, but have been looking for over a year. also not counted as part of the labor market.
contestant 6: inner city resident: not called since the 90s’
contestent 7: a person without a land line/someone who had their phone shut off becasue they couldnt afford it while jobless: no answer, replaced with someone who could.
contestant 8: unemployed, went back to college for a degree to stall. not part of the market
contestant 9: his kid was starving, so he joined the military at the age of 27 to provide. not part of the market
(i met that guy at a chilis in Tyson, Va this summer… sad conversation of the season)
This article is accurate. The reported unemployment numbers today are WRONG! I have been unemployed since February and am one of those “who have found marginal part-time work but still can’t make ends meet and are still looking for a full-time job. ” Why don’t I count? I hope the majority of the public will learn the truth!
You might not have the ideal or even close employment, but you are employed, you are working for a company and getting paid to do so, you are employed, thats why “you don’t count”
For all those extra unemployed people, here’s a way to maintain your luxury lifestyle by using a little American ingenuity:
http://bit.ly/ozqT6
(satire)
Great video. Though funny, points out how the government is not releasing the true picture.
Glossing over reality only works for so long.
U.S. economy has lived off the past via foreign debt, of late massive printing of money, but in reality is somewhat vaporware.
Structural change is apace, and only the nimble will survive!
no so relevant to mint but good marketing.
Get your definition straight.
Underemployment is 17.2%
Unemployment is 10%
When we have people who think they know going around preaching what unemployment rate is … they need to go back to school and learn what it means first.
My only question is: Hows that ‘Hope’ and ‘Change’ working out for you numb-skulled idiots that voted for this? Happy now?
get real — there is 8 years of numbskullery to reverse — that doesn’t happen in 10 months.
A great source for alternate data is ShadowStats. This website adds “discouraged workers” that were defined away during the Clinton Administration to the current BLS estimates of U6 unemployment. According to their methology, actual unemployment is 21.8%.
I’m glad some big(er) tech company has taken the time and put some resources into informing the public. Mint does a great job. It’s hard to imagine the deceit can go much longer in the internet era.
To answer a question from Mike this mornng, estimates are that today’s rates are understated v. the Great Depression by 5-10%.
I wonder how many are surveyed that say they have looked just out of pride, not wanting to admit they’ve given up.
Sadly, it is much worse than any of these numbers that are stated and, even more sadly, the govmint is exacerbating the problem. We just wasted the last decade, the stock market is back where it was and real wages are unchanged. It’s like Japan only worse because they, at least, had their own savings to borrow from, we are at the whim and good graces of the Chinese.
The best video I’ve ever watched!
The government DOES report unemployment AND underemployment figures. This figure is known as “U6″ and is tracked by the
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm
But the press mostly reports unemployment numbers since that is the most easily explainable to the public.
I’m (officially) unemployed, and the video made me laugh. But it’s probably because I had an interview today that went well.
I’ve been job-hunting since July and I consider myself one of the lucky ones. Well, not really lucky or I wouldn’t be unemployed…and now I’m sad again.
somtimes i wish that this crash had gone all the way through so we could all get a do over and maybe start on a new, almost level playing field, but no. people are still getting screwed. anyone who believes 8% unemployment rate and doesn’t understand what actually goes into the calculation should maybe read a book or read/watch/listen to the news.
Still, when 10% is the best they can do with state-of-the-art Pollyanna Creep, it’s unnerving.
You can’t go from 10.2 to <10 without hitting ten in the middle. A .2% increase is spectacular for a month (especially when even the most optimistic estimates were for no change). You SHOULD be joyful