Jobless Count Skips Millions

[flamingyouth]

The rate hits 9.7% when the underemployed and those who have given up the hunt are added.

By David Streitfeld, Times Staff Writer
SAN FRANCISCO — Lisa Gluskin has had a tough three years. She works almost as hard as she did during the dot-com boom, for about 20% of the income.

When Gluskin's writing and editing business cratered in 2001, she slashed her rates, began studying for a graduate degree and started teaching part time at a Lake Tahoe community college for a meager wage.

It's been a fragmented, hand-to-mouth life, one that she sees mirrored by friends and colleagues who are waiting tables or delivering packages. In the late '90s, the 35-year-old Gluskin says, "we had careers. We had trajectories. Now we have complicated lives. We're not unemployed, but we're underemployed."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-jobs29dec29,1,6261515.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Of course, many of us have been saying this for a long time. :grr:

[Lisa0825]

1. That sounds accurate to me

in comparison to what I see in the employment office in Houston.

[flamingyouth]

2. I know so many people

who have been out of work for over a year and cannot find anything. Not to mention the people who are working two or even three part time jobs to make ends me. :argh:

[srpantalonas]

19. Sounds low--should be 20% or more...

underemployment should be defined as "getting paid well below your personal market potential (based on skills and experience)".

[snippy]

34. The Department of Labor claims that it does not keep statistics on

"underemployment" because it would be too difficult.

Is there a measure of underemployment?

Because of the difficulty of developing an objective set of criteria which could be readily used in a monthly household survey, no official government statistics are available on the total number of persons who might be viewed as underemployed. Even if many or most could be identified, it would still be difficult to quantify the loss to the economy of such underemployment.

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_faq.htm#Ques12

[Media_Lies_Daily]

3. As a former self-employed recruiter...

...who once operated a recruiting business for 6 years, it may actually be understating the case. Since late 2000, the recruiting business has been dismal, to say the least.

Additionally, I've seen four recessions since the 1970s, and this is, by far, the worst.

[pansypoo53219]

4. that is because

if greenspan wasn't there. this would be aa DEPRESSION.

[tritsofme]

5. Yep, it'll be interesting to see what happens when Greenie is gone in June

nt

[ozymandius]

8. IMO, Greenspan is a bad shadow figure.

I see this man less as a genius and more as an opportunist. He came in at the right place at the right time. In the duration, he has presided over bubbles: a stock market bubble, a real estate bubble a bond (deficit) bubble. Now, he seems to have his hand at the wheel of a second stock bubble that shows great momentum to pop just like the last one did four years ago.

I know that he has made a fortune in the bond market. This fact feeds suspicion that he is just along for the ride.

[CivilRightsNow]

20. Alan Greenspan...

He was a saxophonist. He originally dropped out of school to be a musician. How ironic.

His mentor taught a real cost economic outlook. He forcasted overconsumption and the pitfalls of globalization in several of his books.

Makes you wonder how being part of the system changed Alan Greenspan into some shadowy Kissingeresque character.

;)

[tritsofme]

37. Yeah, but I think the fed becomes a lot less powerful when he is gone,

and I say good riddance.

[thebaghwan]

6. My wife and I face complete ruin

I have been looking for a job for about two years now. During this time I have spent 1 1/2 years and $5,000 of my money getting two certificates
(one in paralegal studies and the other in contract management) but I cannot find a job. I cannot wait tables or stand long on my feet due to back surgery. Now my wife has been notified she will be laid off the end of January. We are going to have to use our 401K money, but both of us are over 55. I have not had the heart to tell her that we unless we both find jobs real soon we may never be able to retire.

[Voltaire99]

9. Good luck to you

I hope you each find something soon.

[CivilRightsNow]

21. Have you tried changing locations?

I dont know what you do but I do know that I just moved to the midwest after looking for a job for over a year in california. The west coast is getting impacted hardest in this recession. Atleast that is what it looks like from my perspective.

In anycase, good luck. I really think that we will see a little rebound in Q1.

[Tansy_Gold]

35. Changing locations is not always feasible

for a variety of reasons.

For a couple where both are unemployed, relocation may be a more viable option, but that isn't always the case.

For instance: I've been underemployed for almost two years. For us to move would mean hubby giving up his job, with almost 20 years' seniority.

Also, relocation would mean selling our house, which is nearly paid for. In our mid 50s, it would be difficult to "start over" with a new 30-year mortgage, regardless how much we could put down.

The prospect of retirement is looking less and less realistic any time soon. and i think there are many of the boomer generation who are in this situation: too young to retire because savings and social security won't go far enough for a 25- to 30-yar retirement and too old to start from scratch. And we were the ones who were raised to think we would walk into the prosperity our parents built in the post-war economic boom, that we would have it better than they did growing up during the Depression and WW2. Perhaps our youth and young adulthood may have been more prosperous, but it looks as if our middle and old age may be considerably worse.

Tansy Gold, not optimistic

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

7. The question is......

.....do these uncounted unemployed vote?

[area51]

23. Voting

YMBL said:

"The question is... do these uncounted unemployed vote?"

I'm sure almost all of the unemployed/uncounted will be voting ABB; people vote their wallets. How could anyone suffering be in favor of four more years of the 2nd Great Depression?

[Jackpine Radical]

31. I'm shocked, shocked!

Surely you're not trying to blame this Clinton recession on our great hero, ***George*W*Bush***!!

You just have to be patient, and maybe pray for a couple more tax cuts. You just don't understand the brilliance of his economic plan. When finally nobody making over $300,000 per year is poaying any taxes at all, and all welfare payments are cut, then there will be no more incentive to be poor, and all those useless eaters will get off their asses and get real Wall Street jobs where they can ***Create Wealth***!

It's all so simple if you commynist pinkos could just understand it.

[Dogmudgeon]

10. I done been wiped out

When the Idiot Bastard Son was installed into the White House three years ago, I was making very good money as a computer programmer, and had managed to save over $10,000 in two years in spite of paying back large debts from a period of uninsured illness in the 1990s. I made about $7,000 this past year, and those debts haven't gone away.

Right now, I have $18 in the bank, $11 in my wallet, live with Mom and Granny (at age 45, no less), and have no immediate prospects for any kind of career re-start.

Recently, I decided to stop looking for employment that wasn't there, and start to market my skills myself. So I'm facing another new set of anxieties to add to the already active ones.

And I consider myself to be lucky. I'm not married and I have no kids, so the only one to suffer will be me. Although marriage and fatherhood were once part of the list of things I wanted to do with my life, a decade of poor health followed by the Great Bush Depression is making that seem more and more unlikely.

But of course, the Conservative "answer" to this is that I have somehow shirked my Personal Responsibility and I am merely Facing the Consequences of not having a strong-enough Work Ethic.

I hope that the Neo-Cons are enjoying this era. It will probably be their last. If Team Bush is elected this year, by 2008 what passes as a Liberal Democrat today will seem hopelessly right-wing. Once the bill comes due for the excesses of just the past 3 years, not even ear plugs will suffice to keep out the screams of outrage.

--bkl
Contemplating a name change to "Scraped-Knuckled Liberal"

[JPace]

18. "a Liberal Democrat today will seem hopelessly right wing"

I totally agree..if AWOL and his regime get
another 4 years their cruel policies are
going to cause so much suffering that even
the politically ignorant or going to see
the light. It will be good for the Democratic
Party but the people are going to pay a high
price for it.

[The Zanti Regent]

11. Welcome to the club folks!

I got my MA in Economics in 1979 and it has always been a useless piece of paper. It took me four years to get a steady job with Social Security which required a high school degree.

Thanks to the Chimp, SSA will soon contract its' work overseas, so I'll be fighting for a job as a Wal Mart Greeter.

As for Social Security, with these 500 billion deficits, you can kiss it goodbye along with Medicare. Don't forget to go to your church and beg for help like the Supply Side Jesus freaks want you to do...

[Frodo]

12. Why this is the wrong track to take. And what the right track could be.

Let's start with how we SHOULD be talking about the economy...

http://www.smartmoney.com/pundits/index.cfm?story=dec2003gross

Here's a pretty good article by the head of Pimco.

Now for the bad news. This may not be enough to fix what's ailing the economy as a whole. Gross worries that this revival will either exacerbate or fail to redress secular imbalances such as the U.S. current-account deficit, structural rigidities in Europe and huge public-sector debt in Japan. He doubts the recovery will be sustained beyond a cyclical time frame because confronting these so-called imbalances will ultimately constrain domestic growth.

Then there's Gross's concern over the falling dollar. The greenback has shed some 20% of its value — and many on Wall Street are expecting it to drop another 10% during 2004. That's not a positive catalyst for the bond market. "You see, a weaker dollar ultimately means higher inflation, and that is the enemy of every bond investor," Gross says. As inflation moves higher, he explains, perhaps by half a percentage point, interest rates will move up accordingly.

He DOES say that the next year or so will look pretty rosey (timed to coincide with WHAT? Hmmm???) and then we will start to get hit with the price we pay for "stimulating" things so outrageously.



So WHY is this unemployment article a mistake? Because you're all treating it like it's such big news ("those who ignore history...."). It seems like we're saying "Well, 5.9% may not be all that bad, but 9.7% is REALLY going to get people's attention! We'll just draw attention to how BIG THAT number is and nobody wil vote for the guy".

The problem? 9.7% (for THAT measure of unemployment) isn't such an awful number. Shrub's "official" number has dropped from 6.4% to 5.9%, but the U6 figure (that includes "discouraged" and "underemployed") has actually fallen from 11.0% to 9.7%.

You see, EVERY administration has benefited from the "official" U3 number not reflecting total unemployment. So let's do a little comparison - Obviously, everyone thinks Clinton is the most natural comparison:

What do you think the U6 unemployment number was the last two months of 1995 (the similar point in his first term)? Would it shock you to see "9.7%" in that column? Or that he was only UNDER 9.7% for a couple months during his 1996 re-election run? Or that he was in double-digits for almost his entire first term?

Does anyone remember unemployment being a big thorn in Clinton's side for his re-election?


I'm not saying the numbers are good (particularly when compared to Clinton's SECOND term), just that they aren't bad enough to sink his campaign... and running articles like this thinking it's evidence that things are SOOO much worse than they're been since the 30's is going to get us killed come November.

[Lost4words]

14. consider this a personal attack against you FRODO

I could just give a poop for your opinion. I am asking God to put you where so many of us are right now.

[Frodo]

17. No offense taken. I understand.

You've gotten the shaft. I don't think it's fair and I'm not unsypathetic. I honestly do hope you find something fulfilling that actually pays the bills.

I just can't look at individual situations and say "THAT represents the whole economy". As I posted... Clinton's total U6 unemployment figure in the same month of his first term looked just like what we have now so I can't see us getting a lot of traction.

But even when unemployment was at it's BEST in Clinton's second term, we still had millions of people unemployed or underemployed. Would you have been "heartless" if you pointed out that , overall, things looked pretty good?

[Maeve]

15. There shouldn't be a "the track"; there should be many

Pointing out that underemployment is a real problem should not be the only option, but it is one that resonates with many folk--look around the thread.

We can't look for one magic bullet to fire against the re-selection; we need to develop a full arsenal. Each piece will work together.

[Frodo]

16. True. I agree completely.

My point is that the economy and Iraq have been too big a part of our arsenal this cycle. Iraq is perceived to be turning around, and the economy actually IS getting better (not "is GOOD", just improving).

We can't wait until September to realize which way the wind is blowing and say "well THESE were our REAL issues... we've just been saving them".

Absolutely we chould continue to talk about unemployment because 1996 is not when Bush "took over", he had a much better economy that has since gone downhill. It's just not the killer argument some seem to think it is.

[headlouse]

25. Excellent commentary Frodo

For a humble hobbit, your quite informed of national economic issues ;)

While the economy will suck hard for some time and most likely will never return to once it was, it is improving and my guess is that it will keep this up until at least after the election. Even if the economy doesn't improve much in 2004, the public will see this as a sign that it will continue to improve. Thus all of us waving "bush killed the economy" signs (whether true or not) will just be seen as chicken littles -- and no one elects a chicken little.

Just Me's comment that no one gives much credence to "publicized" numbers because they can be skewed is just as true (if not more true) for these numbers. I mean come'on people what does it sound like when someone tells you "The government numbers may say everything is rosy but if you count it this special way then you can see that it's actually quite dismal!" However right you may be it definately sounds like your cooking the books to get the answer you want.

If we are going to kick the Bush cronycrats out of office we need a better arguement.

[Just Me]

24. Perhaps, it's merely the well-educated and informed circles,...

,...towards which I gravitate. BUT, no one I know puts much stock in or gives heavy credence to publicized "numbers" these days. We are all quite skeptical because we all know the "numbers" can be skewed and ARE inconsistent with the realities we observe on a day-by-day basis. Nearly all my educated friends (and I) have been facing employment and economic challenges we sincerely never did foresee. Can't say that we blame-stake on any single particular,...however, we are much more aware of the "it's not what you know but who you know" scenarios at play. AND, we are far more sensitive to the many fictions we bought into over the years (i.e. if you work hard and get an education, you can hop on a buss, stop anywhere in the US and get a job,...myths like that).

[Jeff in Cincinnati]

28. Reread the SFGate article

The "part-time and discouraged" number they cite is 9.7%, which is up from 9.4% for 2002. When the unemployment rate is rising in the face of an economic recovery, that's a campaign issue.

But larger point is that even though Clinton experienced similar numbers, his numbers were on a downward trend throughout his terms in office.

1994 -- 10.9
1995 -- 10.1
1996 -- 9.7
1997 -- 8.9
1998 -- 8.0
1999 -- 7.4
2000 -- 7.0

As opposed to the trend of the Bush Administration:

2001 -- 8.1
2002 -- 9.6
2003 -- 10.1 (through 11/03)

To not use jobs as a campaign issue would be a blunder of epic proportions.

Numbers are from the BLS http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab12.htm#a12.f.1

[Frodo]

39. Yes and no.

Looking at the annual numbers doesn't do too much good. People don't have that long a memory. Here's the full year '95 to '03 comparison:

1995 11.1 10.5 10.3 9.8 9.8 10.4 10.4 10.0 9.7 9.3 9.6 9.7 10.1
2003 11.0 10.8 10.4 9.8 9.7 10.6 10.5 10.0 9.8 9.5 9.7

Obviously they are virtually identical. And '96 didn't show continual improvement. Shrub doesn't even have to STAY at 9.7% to look "ok":

1996 10.8 10.7 10.3 9.7 9.5 10.0 10.0 9.3 9.0 8.8 8.9 9.2 9.7

Yes, I agree that jobs HAS to be an issue. We just can't pretend that it is some sort of silver bullet.

A better comparison is probably Reagan. The economy got SUBSTANTIALLY worse over his first two years... but it was noticiably improving by the time the election rolled around. Nobody "blamed" him for the 81-82 recession (at least not enough people for us to win more than one state).

[Lost4words]

13. My wife and I are in the same boat.

same story same profession, about the same age, I am 49.

I/we once had a bright future, now all retirement is gone all savings are gone. prospects for a retirement all gone. No family to fall back on.

Frankly Jackie and Jim are totally fucked.

It makes me want to rob banks,

[thebaghwan]

26. It is very difficult to deal with the big picture of one's private finance

I don't know whether to go bankrupt or start using our 401k money and pray we both get a job soon.

[stevedeshazer]

38. I hear ya

I'm 48, my savings and 401k are gone now, and my meager benefits were cut off last week. My wife works and has a good job, though (for now.)

I was planning to retire at 60. Looks more like never now.

[PaDUer]

40. Maybe we

can do a Bonnie and Clyde?

[Lost4words]

41. almost ready to.

What I would like to do is find a super hacker, transfer funds from the carlisle group into my bank account for 24 hours and then return the original sum. The interest from 1 day should cover anything I could do for the rest of my life.

Stinking greedy bastards. :mad:

[silverlib]

22. unemployment figures

The US has a unique way of counting. It is my understanding that Europe counts their prison population. Even though it is stated that the unemployed in this country are still counted even though they don't draw unemployment, my understanding is that they are only counted if they continue to report to the local unemployment office.

My husband has been employed on and off (had a couple of temp jobs)since last May. He has run out of State unemployment and drew his last check on the federal end (he only drew two) since the Re-pugs have refused to extend the benefits. I guess he, too, will go off the "count" along with 800,000 ? others.

I work at home doing medical transcription and just lost one of my accounts to another company. Because I am a contractor, my loss doesn't count. Fortunately, I still have other accounts, but losing this one cost me about $800 a month. Not a small amount when no other money is coming in.

Bush's economic accounting is a disaster, along with everything else he and the neocons touch, and I honestly do not feel like any of this is an accident.

[WillyT]

27. Kick !!!

:mad::kick::mad:

[ozone_man]

29. Very good article.

The press has not adequately reported the jobs issue, which will be the key issue for the Democrats in 2004. The successful candidate will be able to speak to this issue. The economy is a lot worse than anyone has acknowledged.

(snip)

At the same time, benefits have been sweetened. As a result, millions of individuals who lost jobs now have an attractive — and permanent — alternative to searching for work.

Autor and Duggan concluded that if disability payments weren't so appealing, many more people would be unemployed, boosting the jobless rate two-thirds of a point.

(snip)

That prospect alarms Erica Groshen, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. "If you plot job losses versus gains on a chart, it's shocking," she says.

(snip)

[bleedingheart]

30. Today my husband joined the ranks of the unemployed and

with two small kids to feed I am hoping he finds something because I worry about the status of my own job.... if I lost my job we would have to consider selling our home and moving in with my mom if things go haywire...

[Ookie]

32. This really sucks!

I just got back from a local staffing agency (who called me) and spent my time getting dressed up and driving an hour round trip just to hear this guy tell me that he doesn't have anything "at my level". I tried to tell him that "my level" is one week of unemployment benefits to go and that I NEED A FREAKIN JOB!!!!!

There was an article in the Seattle PI about how much productivity has risen, and basically it means that fewer people are doing the same amount of work. Profits for the wealthy, however, have continued to rise.

This administration has GOT TO GO!!!!!

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/154301_workerrecovery29.html


"The reasons for labor's poor showing are not hard to spot. The employment rolls are still smaller, by 2.4 million jobs, than they were at the recession's start in March 2001. Those who are employed are also feeling the squeeze, particularly the 85 million people who hold office or factory jobs below the rank of supervisor or manager. Their average hourly wage, $15.46, is up only 3 cents since July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That wage is rising at an annual rate of less than 2 percent, barely enough to keep up with inflation, mild as it now is.

"We have never seen in the 40 years that we have this hourly wage survey, wage growth that has been this slow," said Dean Baker, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research."

[baldguy]

33. Su-prize Su-prize Su-prize

Tell me something I don't know.

[htuttle]

36. We do seasonal hiring where I work

We always increase our staff for the winter, as it decreases somewhat naturally as spring arrives. They aren't bad jobs, but not what you'd necessarily want to make a career from. It's a taxicab company.

Most years, we've had to spend tens of thousands on Help Wanted advertisements just to get people in the door. During the height of the Clinton administration, we had to give out hiring bonuses just to get a few people here and there, and we were always short-staffed.

This year, we haven't spent a DIME on Help Wanted ads, we're fully staffed for winter -- maybe even overstaffed, and now have numerous former white collar professionals driving our cabs.

Sure. The economy is really picking up...