If the US calculated unemployment the same way as Spain does, the US would be well above 25% unemployment today.
The US unemployment calculation has been modified and manipulated to show good numbers over the past 50 years. The headline number today is the U3 rate, but we used to show the U6 number which included underemployed as well. On top of this none of these numbers include people who dropped out of the workforce and are now on entitlements (which is unemployed). You add this all up and we are well past 25%. If the government ever runs out of entitlement money people are going to see just how bad the employment situation really is.
But we live in the era of twitter politics that generate headlines such as "Unemployment dropped to 5.6% under Obama", never mind the fact that Obama changed the calculation a bit to hit that number, and the number is complete bullshit.
The US unemployment calculation has been modified and manipulated to show good numbers over the past 50 years. The headline number today is the U3 rate, but we used to show the U6 number which included underemployed as well. On top of this none of these numbers include people who dropped out of the workforce and are now on entitlements (which is unemployed). You add this all up and we are well past 25%. If the government ever runs out of entitlement money people are going to see just how bad the employment situation really is.
But we live in the era of twitter politics that generate headlines such as "Unemployment dropped to 5.6% under Obama", never mind the fact that Obama changed the calculation a bit to hit that number, and the number is complete bullshit.
Yes, the numbers are so distorted they have lost historical significance. 100 years ago government workers were counted as unemployed as they were funded from taxation, not the productive economy. Not only does the debt-based financial system need a reset button, so do economic statistics.
