Unemployment Rate at 16.5%
As I expected yesterday, the official employment report for June indicates that businesses in the US shed another 476,000 jobs:
Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline in June (-467,000), and the unemployment rate was little changed at 9.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Job losses were widespread across the major industry sectors, with large declines occurring in manufacturing, professional and business services, and construction.
It is noteworthy that real unemployment is now at 16.5%:
Click on image to enlarge.
Unemployment at 15.6 Percent
The monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics report indicates that U-6 (the rate of the officially unemployed (U-3) plus discouraged workers who have stopped looking plus people trying to get by in part time jobs) has gone up to 15.8%:
Another measure that is always worth looking at is at shadowstats.com:
The SGS Alternative rate is an attempt at a more accurate approximation of the number of discouraged workers which was narrowed down under President Clinton. This rate has now reached around 20%.
Civilians Unemployed for 27+ Weeks at Record High
The number of civilians unemployed for 27+ weeks is soaring to record highs since it was first tracked:
5 yr chart:
Click on image to enlage.
60 yr chart:
Click on image to enlarge.
Part of the stimulus bill was an extension of unemployment benefits:
The National Employment Law Project (NELP) has a Q&A (PDF) that details the new options available under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which allows high unemployment states to provide up to 13 to 20 weeks of additional extended benefits to workers who run out of federal funded unemployment benefits. Currently, there are 20 to 33 weeks of benefits for workers who run out of their state unemployment, so this plan, if adopted by the states, would provide additional weeks of federally funded benefits.
This, of course, will only aggravate the numbers above for a simple reason: The more something is subsidized, the more of it will be produced.
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