- by New Deal democrat
Beginning with Jared Bernstein's piece in the NYTimes this week, there's been another spasm of allegations that there is a dark, uncounted pool of secret unemployed that aren't showing up in the official numbers. Culminating with a post at the usual DOOMER place claiming that the job report this morning, and in particular the decline to 5.9% unemployment, was not a good report.
Nonsense.
Every single month, the Census Bureau counts those who have entirely stopped looking, and dropped out of the labor force, but want a job now.
Every single month, the Census Bureau counts those who are working part time jobs, but would like a full time job.
Thus, it is pretty easy to compare this jobs recovery with the prior two jobs recoveries.
Following the 1991 recession, the unemployment rate first dropped below 6% in September 1994. That month here are the numbers for those who were out of the job force, but wanted a job (NILFWJN) and who were part time for economic reasons (PTER):
NILFWJN 6.104 million
PTER 4.332 million
Following the 2001 recession, the unemployment rate first dropped below 6% in November 2003. Here are the numbers for that month:
NILFWJN 4.534 million
PTER 4.882 million
Now here are the numbers for this month:
NILFWJN 6.349 million
PTER 7.103 million
Especially considering that the labor force has grown, the number of those who have completely stopped looking is equivalent to 1994. The number of part time jobs is about 2.5 million higher than in those two prior recoveries.
On the other hand, in this recovery, we have created a lot more jobs than would previously have been suspected with a 2% average GDP. It appears the trade-off for that is that a significant number remain part time jobs, and wage growth has suffered.
