The recent rise in the “official” unemployment rate to 9.5% has created a lot of concern, especially since it unemployment has grown faster than the Obama administration predicted. This in turn has led to calls for a second stimulus (unfortunately, most people don’t realize that there were a great many economists calling for the first stimulus to be even larger… why they don’t know this is thanks to our wonderful traditional media, who parrot every right-wing talking point as if it were the sermon on the mount).
However, as Charles Lemos points out at MyDD, the official unemployment statistics bandied about severely undercount the numbers of people out of work. The actual numbers of people who are unable to work at all, or who are working part-time when they would rather be working full-time, is 16.5%, and there are several states where the numbers are 20% or higher. Even worse, those numbers are still going to go up.
Thanks, Dubya!
