wait for it, wait for it………….You have to be qualified before they will hire you, They wont even look at you if your experience could be remotely applied to job, or be trained on the job…or worse yet you have say alot expeience in tech background and they sent the job to india. They’d rather pay 10cents hr and now if you apply in america …your boss is Indian.

I just found a little flaw at the end. The last contestant, who is the only one consider unemployed is actually not doing active job searching as the BLS would specify, thus she will not be considered unemployed. If you go to the following link: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#why. And look at the question: Who is counted as unemployed? You will see that since she was only looking at internet adds (passive job search method), and not necessarily sending a resume, she will be not considered as actively looking for a job.

For more parts of the unemployment and jobless recovery puzzle, including possible solutions, you can look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery

1999: 7.4
2000: 2.0
2001: 8.1
2002: 9.6
2003: 10.1
2004: 9.6
2005: 8.9
2006: 8.2
2007: 8.3
2008: 10.5
2009: NOV rate is 16.4, highest is 16.8, lowest is 15.4

Unemployment rates have consistently risen from OCT 2008 to MAR 2009 (nowhere else in the series do you see this kind of consistency, it’s usually all over the place with ups and downs).

You can replicate this data yourself by going to http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab12.htm and checking U-6 / Not Seasonally Adjusted. For the curious, Seasonally Adjusted rates spike at 17.5 in OCT 2009, and saw a consistent increase for a much longer time series: NOV 2007 to OCT 2009, with one small blip (.2% decrease) in JUL 2009. The most recent date (NOV 2009) is possibly (okay, probably) another such blip, showing a .3% decrease.

Ironically, the JUL 2009 blip seems to be a miscalculation, since it dropped below the previous month figure and then topped that previous month figure the following month. This could be a spot effect of what “Seasonally Adjusted” means (more seasonal work in JUL?), though the historical JUL numbers don’t justify that conjecture.

What’s the takeaway? 2009 is very abnormal with regards to with U-6 unemployment (the real unemployment rate). So what happened in JUL 2007 that’s effecting our employment rate to this day?

The national unemployment number doesn’t matter when it comes to unemployment benefits. The concepts are similar, but you can be officially unemployed and not get benefits, and you can get benefits and not be officially unemployed.

@Adam: Not only does the government publish the alternative measures of unemployment, they publish it in the SAME news release.

@Linda: You would be counted as unemployed in the national survey, even if you were a contract worker or self-employed. Even if you don’t qualify for benefit.

@Robert Speirs: Many states (and it is states, not the federal govt, who adminsters unemployment payments) will still provide benefits if you are getting training or job transition assistance, if you go through them. Also, just living in your parents’ home doesn’t make you unemployed.

Finally, @Richard is absolutely right. Nothing has changed in how the unemployment rate is calculated. This is not some Obama trick or Bush trick or even Clinton trick.

Do you want to know if you are officially unemployed, as per this survey? Are you working? No? Are you actively looking for work? Yes? Then you’re unemployed.

The 10% figure is the unemployment rate. This is how unemployment is (and has over time been) measured. The U-6 estimate of 17.2% is not a measure of unemployment. It’s a broader measure that can be useful to show those negatively impacted in the labor market. There are also many other estimates that can be used. This is why there is a whole report (and tons of numbers online) instead of just one number and an emoticon to describe the labor market. (And just how high do you want it to be before it’s “real”?)

The gov’t material can be a bit technical, but it is readily available online. Read about how the unemployment is measured at http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm. Unemployment is not based on getting unemployment benefits, since they are not available to everyone. People aren’t allowed to classify themselves, because there would be no consistency. A standard set of questions have been used to classify people based on specific objective actions. The questions haven’t really changed much over time and are in line with international standards of measuring unemployment.

People with a job are employed. Trying to define them as unemployed is absurd (and insulting to those who are looking for work). However, data are available to describe characteristics of the employed (industry, occupation, hours, wages, etc). It shouldn’t really be up to the government to decide what a “good” job is.

Underemployment can be a very subjective measure and hard to define. (If you base it on pay, how much is enough? If you base it on skill, who decides what is appropriate?) One objective measure is a time-based estimate of people working involuntary part time (what the gov’t calls part time for economic reasons) – people who had their hours cut by their employer (or slow business for self-employed) and those who would prefer to work full-time but could only find part time work. See information online at http://www.bls.gov/cps/lfcharacteristics.htm#pter.

If you aren’t looking (or haven’t looked) for work, it is hard to describe you as unemployed. (That definition would also include my retired father, a stay-at-home mom, and college kids.) Data on those who have given up looking for work are reported each month, as are numbers for people who say they want to work (whether they have looked or not). These questions identify those not in the labor force that have some “attachment” to the labor force from the others that do not want a job now. http://www.bls.gov/cps/lfcharacteristics.htm#discouraged