Federal unemployment surveys in the US apparently don't include a wide swath of people. For instance, anyone who works as little as one hour a week, is not considered unemployed in the U.S. I don't think Du Boff was including roughly two million poor American's who are being warehoused in private and public jails and are also not counted in unemployment statistics. If that's true, then Du Boff's real U rate in the U.S. for May of 2003 would have been close to 25 percent. Economists consider a U rate of 20 percent to be depression level. So much for flexible labour markets and the corporate welfare state.

homelessness in America

[ 22 May 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Michelle:
Well, but, I also wouldn't include people in jail in unemployment figures.

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Does this thread have anything to with, well, anything? The unemployment rate is a ratio of two endogenous variables, the number of people who are employed, and the labour force. There are any number of reasons why the numerator and the denominator of that expression may vary. My reactions to the OP is to yawn and say 'So what'? What difference does it make if the current US employment situation is redefined as 25% unemployment? Or even 37.5% unemployment (the current US employment ratio is around 62.5%)?

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Originally posted by thwap:

Prison guards employed are also not counted, though they are a problematic group to add to the "employed" figures.

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Huh?

Umm could you explain this thinking?

Since prison guards are dependent upon this social problem, it's difficult to crow about an unemployment rate made low to some extent, by a large prison industrial complex.

In any case, direct comparisons of unemployment rates are problematic, since each country has their own definition of who is working, and of who is in the labour force. The OECD keeps a separate set of numbers that is supposed to correct for these variations, and its March numbers have the Canadian and US unemployment rates at 6.9% and 5.2%, respectively.

[ 21 May 2005: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]

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Originally posted by Michelle:
Are you assuming that everyone who is in prison is there because of unemployment?

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I also have a hard time believing that the U.S. does a very good job of counting those who are homeless, or who have simply given up on looking for work. In a country with much less of a social safety net than other countries, there is much less of an incentive for anyone to identify themselves as being unemployed.

With these and other factors (e.g. how part-timers are classified), I have a very hard time believing that that the real unemployment rate in the U.S. is much below that of Canada, if at all.

[ 22 May 2005: Message edited by: Albireo ]

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Originally posted by Albireo:
I recall reading (not sure about this) that U.S. unemployment statistics don't even include parolees.

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By what I've read, that number is roughly another two million on parole. Add another two million for those on probation for a total of ~ 6 million entangled in the USian gulag system. About 80% of those in the largest prison state in the world are there for minor drug and other petty offenses. Many prisoners in privately run jails will be making car parts for auto companies, work as call centre agents or even stitch "Made in USA" labels on clothing shipped from Honduras or El Salvador, some of which will be the result of child labour.

It's gulag labour, and it undermines worker solidarity as well as being one large, state-funded union busting policy at the expense of working(or not) American's.

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
My reactions to the OP is to yawn and say 'So what'? What difference does it make if the current US employment situation is redefined as 25% unemployment? Or even 37.5% unemployment (the current US employment ratio is around 62.5%)?
And where the hell did that 25% number come from, anyway?

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It makes a difference to those looking for work and at risk for being pushed into that grey area known as "no longer looking for work" when EI benefits are exhausted. It matters to those worker's with families who have to sell their homes because they can't afford mortgage payments anymore. It matters to millions of people who become "invisible" to society, and not because they've worked enough weeks in order to count as unemployed, but rather the err is on the side of political expedience and "nul" statistics.

C'mon, Stephen, the Bush admin let 20 consecutive months of manufacturing job losses slide by without lifting a laissez-faire finger. These Reds are the first government in the States to have a net job loss economy on their watch since Hoover. We know that so many people enter the American workforce every month(what, 180K or so?)
and the economy either produces that number of jobs, or it does not. What does the BLS do with the excess ?. Are they simply categorized as "useless eaters" in the corporate welfare state ?.

The Bushy's lip service to Keynes was to cut taxes for the richest American's: those whose spending habits would be least affected by an increase in savings. Where do all the excess workers get swept to over the years, Stephen, under a statistical rug?.

And so since Raygun, the Yanks count all military personel as employed(conservatives believe in socialist policy here because it benefits clapitalists and their various colonialist conquests of former cold war turf); they don't include millions of poor being warehoused in private-public partnered gulags(a Wall Street theme stock of the 1990's, btw) ; the one-hour-a-week'ers; those thoroughly discouraged from being discouraged; the several million homeless and the underemployed, all for the sake of ideological appearances, do not count in the American U2 statistic.

[ 22 May 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]

If I don't have a job and I need one, I'm unemployed, and it doesn't matter if I'm out looking for a job or not. However, I will only be counted in the unemployment statistics for a given month if I actually go out and put in resumes/job applications in that month. So unemployment statistics do not take into account those people who have "given up" looking for a job, even though they don't have one. I figure that any official unemployment rate should be doubled to take these people into account.

[ 25 May 2005: Message edited by: Left Turn ]

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If I don't have a job and I need one, I'm unemployed, and it doesn't matter if I'm out looking for a job or not.

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Heifer Dust!!!