Most Popular
1. It’s a New Macro, the Gold Market Knows It, But Dead Men Walking Do Not (yet)- Gary_Tanashian
2.Stock Market Presidential Election Cycle Seasonal Trend Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
3. Bitcoin S&P Pattern - Nadeem_Walayat
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
4.U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - Raymond_Matison
5. How to Profit from the Global Warming ClImate Change Mega Death Trend - Part1 - Nadeem_Walayat
7.Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - Nadeem_Walayat
9.It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - Stephen_McBride
10.Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - Richard_Mills
Last 7 days
Stocks, Bitcoin and Crypto Markets Breaking Bad on Donald Trump Pump - 21st Nov 24
Gold Price To Re-Test $2,700 - 21st Nov 24
Stock Market Sentiment Speaks: This Is My Strong Warning To You - 21st Nov 24
Financial Crisis 2025 - This is Going to Shock People! - 21st Nov 24
Dubai Deluge - AI Tech Stocks Earnings Correction Opportunities - 18th Nov 24
Why President Trump Has NO Real Power - Deep State Military Industrial Complex - 8th Nov 24
Social Grant Increases and Serge Belamant Amid South Africa's New Political Landscape - 8th Nov 24
Is Forex Worth It? - 8th Nov 24
Nvidia Numero Uno in Count Down to President Donald Pump Election Victory - 5th Nov 24
Trump or Harris - Who Wins US Presidential Election 2024 Forecast Prediction - 5th Nov 24
Stock Market Brief in Count Down to US Election Result 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Gold Stocks’ Winter Rally 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Why Countdown to U.S. Recession is Underway - 3rd Nov 24
Stock Market Trend Forecast to Jan 2025 - 2nd Nov 24
President Donald PUMP Forecast to Win US Presidential Election 2024 - 1st Nov 24
At These Levels, Buying Silver Is Like Getting It At $5 In 2003 - 28th Oct 24
Nvidia Numero Uno Selling Shovels in the AI Gold Rush - 28th Oct 24
The Future of Online Casinos - 28th Oct 24
Panic in the Air As Stock Market Correction Delivers Deep Opps in AI Tech Stocks - 27th Oct 24
Stocks, Bitcoin, Crypto's Counting Down to President Donald Pump! - 27th Oct 24
UK Budget 2024 - What to do Before 30th Oct - Pensions and ISA's - 27th Oct 24
7 Days of Crypto Opportunities Starts NOW - 27th Oct 24
The Power Law in Venture Capital: How Visionary Investors Like Yuri Milner Have Shaped the Future - 27th Oct 24
This Points To Significantly Higher Silver Prices - 27th Oct 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

Close Look at the Accelerating Rate of U.S. Unemployment

Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010 Apr 08, 2009 - 08:32 PM GMT

By: Mike_Shedlock

Economics

Best Financial Markets Analysis ArticleThe trend in unemployment is unmistakably up and accelerating. Let's start with a discussion of widely followed data followed by many additional charts that you may not have seen before.


Here is a closeup from Jobs Contract 15th Straight Month; Unemployment Rate Soars to 8.5% courtesy of the BLS.



The official unemployment number is known as U-3. It does not count discouraged workers, marginally attached workers, or those working part time for economic reasons. The BLS highlights those other numbers in Table A-12.

Table A-12

Table A-12 is where one can find a better approximation of what the unemployment rate really is. Let's take a look



Grim Statistics

The official unemployment rate is 8.5% and rising sharply. However, if you start counting all the people that want a job but gave up, all the people with part-time jobs that want a full-time job, all the people who dropped off the unemployment rolls because their unemployment benefits ran out, etc., you get a closer picture of what the unemployment rate is. That number is in the last row labeled U-6.

U-6 Minus U-3 Accelerating



The above table shows that U-6 is accelerating faster than U-3. This is important because U-6 is a far better approximation of unemployment than U-3 (the "official" number).

I asked my friend Chris Puplava at Financial Sense if he could produce historical charts of the above trend. Chris was happy to oblige. He even added some additional charts to discuss as well.

U-6 Vs. U-3 Historical


U-6, U-3 and Median Weeks Unemployed



Note that U-6 is an artifact of the Clinton administration. It did not exist prior to 1994.

To make the unemployment statistics look better, Clinton decided to ignore certain classes of workers such as those who want work but did not look in the last 4 weeks. Thus, It makes no sense to compare the reported unemployment of today to historical numbers.

Using U-6 as our measure, unemployment easily exceeds the unemployment rate in the 70, 8o's and early Clinton years as well.

Part Time Workers as a Percentage of Total Employment



Part time unemployment for economic reasons is soaring. One person emailed me last week saying his hours were cut from 20 to 4. That person is still considered employed.

Salman Khan on Unemployment




Consumer Sentiment vs. Unemployment



The above chart shows U-3 unemployment vs. the consumer conference board survey of how hard it is to find jobs. The year over year survey results suggests consumers believe jobs are increasingly hard to get.

Note that the survey is a leading or coincident indicator while unemployment itself is a lagging indicator. This portends more job weakness for quite some time even after the peak in "hard to find" sentiment is reached.

Unemployment (U-6) is well on its way to 20%. These are depression conditions. For more on a comparison between unemployment today and that during the Great Depression, please see Census Hiring To Create 1.4 Million Jobs , and scroll down to the section called Depression Statistics .

By Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Mike Shedlock / Mish is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management . Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction.

Visit Sitka Pacific's Account Management Page to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

I do weekly podcasts every Thursday on HoweStreet and a brief 7 minute segment on Saturday on CKNW AM 980 in Vancouver.

When not writing about stocks or the economy I spends a great deal of time on photography and in the garden. I have over 80 magazine and book cover credits. Some of my Wisconsin and gardening images can be seen at MichaelShedlock.com .

© 2009 Mike Shedlock, All Rights Reserved

Mike Shedlock Archive

© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Comments

Steve
15 Apr 09, 14:22
Where are the jobs?

From 30 or so years now manufacturing plants closing and hardly any of our US Leaders considered the rammifications. Now the final call, and you can be sure they will not bring us back into the industrial age. What happened to made in America? Well the Multi-National corporations, lobbied congress and you the US worker lost..big time. Corporations, The Fed and IMF have it all wrong. Now the US will never get back to the standard of living past generations had. The country is BANKRUPT! Taxing imports to level the playing field would bring industry back. We could make everything here! Free trade is fine, if it's fair trade. Won't happen and we will all perish into the vortex of poverty. The politicians play you like following the Pied Piper.....


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in