'Real' Unemployment Rate Shows Far More Jobless

From CNBC:

The government's most widely publicizedunemployment rate measures only those who are out of a job and currently looking for work. It does not count discouraged potential employees who have quit looking, nor those who are underemployed — wanting to work full-time but forced to work part-time. 

For that count, the government releases a separate number called the "U-6," which provides a more complete tally of how many people really are out of work. 

The numbers in some cases are startling. 

Consider: Nevada's U-6 rate is 22.1 percent, up from just 7.6 percent in 2007. Economically troubled California has a 20.3 percent real rate, while Rhode Island is at 18.3 percent, more than double its 8.3 percent rate in 2007. 

Those numbers compare especially unfavorably to the national rate, high in itself at 14.9 percent though off its record peak of 17.2 percent in October 2009. 

Only three states — Nebraska (9.1 percent), South Dakota (8.6 percent) and North Dakota (6.1 percent) — have U-6 rates under 10 percent, according to research from RBC Capital Markets. 

Election battleground states paint a picture not much more flattering. Florida's U-6 number is an ugly 17 percent, though Pennsylvania and Ohio are both around 14 percent, below the national U-6 average.

Here is a definition of the U-6 Unemployment Rate:

The U6 unemployment rate counts not only people without work seeking full-time employment (the more familiar U-3 rate), but also counts "marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons." Note that some of these part-time workers counted as employed by U-3 could be working as little as an hour a week. And the "marginally attached workers" include those who have gotten discouraged and stopped looking, but still want to work. 

The definition states these workers may have gotten "discouraged" in the pursuit of a job. But, the truth is, many of these people found themselves up against the end of their unemployment benefits, took a marginal part-time job, and disappeared into the black hole of the economy.

My sister would be one of these people. She became unemployed in March of 2009. She still is not really employed. However, after her benefits ran out, she had a friend who said to her, "Hey, you know, once every week or so, could use your help in our office, filing and doing stuff like that. So, my sister works an average of four hours a week at $8.50 an hour, or whatever.

That is U-6 Unemployment.