Real Unemployment 16.8 Percent (Not Seasonally Adjusted)

Among the marginally attached, there were 796,000 discouraged workers in July, up by 335,000 over the past 12 months. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.)

Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them.

Not many people are aware of the U-6 report that is issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Most news organizations report the more popular Bureau of Labor Statistics--Civilian Unemployment Rate. If you read this report today then you learned that unemployment was 9.4 percent.

Real Unemployment U-6 -- 16.8%

There is another category of unemployed that are not counted in that report. They are described in the U-6 report this way,

Marginally attached workers are persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached,have given a job-market related reason for not looking currently for a job.

The U-6 report counts everyone that is unemployed. To view the report go here.

U-6

• Total unemployed
• plus all marginally attached workers
• plus total employed part time for economic reasons
• as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers

The number reported today for this series is 16.8% .

Not a very pretty picture if you fall in these categories.

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