The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released the jobless numbers for April 2011. This is a regular monthly exercise in statistical flim-flam, and the BLS knows it.
The meaningless unemployment rate in the headlines: 9% (up from 8.9%). The real unemployment rate: 16.6% (includes people who no longer get unemployment benefits, need work but have stopped looking because it’s futile, or have only found part-time work). Learn more here.
There was a net gain of 200,000 jobs in the past month, not all of them at McDonald’s (some were at Wendy’s). At that rate, all of America’s 13 million unemployed should be working by about 2016.
Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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Tags: economics, economy, employment, jobs, unemployment, unemployment rate
May 9, 2011 at 10:56 pm
Related:
“The Jobless Effect: Is the Real Unemployment Rate 16.5%, 22%, or. . .?” Pallavi Gogoi, DailyFinance
“Why Washington Has Given Up on the Unemployed,” Michael McCarthy, The Globalist