Real US unemployment rate at 16 pct: Fed official

[thundley4]

The real US unemployment rate is 16 percent if persons who have dropped out of the labor pool and those working less than they would like are counted, a Federal Reserve official said Wednesday.
"If one considers the people who would like a job but have stopped looking -- so-called discouraged workers -- and those who are working fewer hours than they want, the unemployment rate would move from the official 9.4 percent to 16 percent, said Atlanta Fed chief Dennis Lockhart.
He underscored that he was expressing his own views, which did "do not necessarily reflect those of my colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee," the policy-setting body of the central bank.

Lockhart pointed out in a speech to a chamber of commerce in Chattanooga, Tennessee that those two categories of people are not taken into account in the Labor Department's monthly report on the unemployment rate. The official July jobless rate was 9.4 percent.

Breitbart

To be fair, I'm sure this may have happened under President Bush, but this is almost a 50% difference in reported and real.

[NHSparky]

If one considers the people who would like a job but have stopped looking -- so-called discouraged workers

How else to explain last month when the Oconomy shed another 400K jobs and the unemployment rate went DOWN?

[Lacarnut]

16% might even be on the low side. Unemployment keeps going up and the fools in the media tells us that a recovery has started. I don't think so. Half of the people that have jobs are worried  that they are going to lose them.

[thundley4]

16% might even be on the low side. Unemployment keeps going up and the fools in the media tells us that a recovery has started. I don't think so. Half of the people that have jobs are worried  that they are going to lose them.

I'm still worried every week whether I'll get a full week in or not. I went through a period of about 2 months+ of half paychecks.