U6 unemployment, the more relevant measure is 14.7%.

President Obama is speaking at George Mason University today (traffic is insane!). He has a long awaited jobs one-liner: the U3 unemployment rate fell to 7.8%. He probably won’t mention that U6 unemployment, the more indicative measure of true unemployment, remained at 14.7%. This is due to a large increase in the number of workers working part time for economic reasons. The number of part-time workers rose by 582,000 according to the Household Survey.

Change in nonfarm payrolls rose by 114,000, according to the Establishment Survey. Hardly comforting given the 12,088,000 unemployed. And remember that the survey of households uncovered an additional 800,000+ jobs last month, 187,000 of which were government workers. [This reminds me of the miraculous appearance of boxes of ballots during a close election].

The number of non-institutional population going on disability has increased dramatically, as has the number of households on the SNAP (food stamp) program. In fact, the number of people going on disability since July 2010 has been larger than the decline in unemployment by near a quarter of a million! Read more >>