RussiaToday has a different take on American unemployment figures...

[kgbsquirrel]

You can file this one under "things that make me go hmmmm...." If these hold out, it would certainly bolster Romney's 47%-wont-ever-vote-non-democrat figure.

http://rt.com/usa/news/jobs-us-employment-welfare-749/

"The employment-to-population ratio is the best measure of labor market conditions and it currently shows that there has been almost no improvement whatsoever over the past three years," Paul Ashworth, chief North American economist for Capital Economics, writes in a note to clients obtained by CNN. That figure, which accounts for the proportion of working Americans compared with the number of adults in the country, is a lot higher than 8 per cent.

For now, 58.7 per cent of American adults are working if the actual employment-population ratio is taken into consideration, leaving about 82 million, or almost 41 per cent of people unemployed. Only 8 per cent, however, are even interested in work, leaving 33 per cent of Americans not only jobless — but with no desire for work.

[Fly320s]

That must include retired people.

[Balog]

And stay at home moms, and the disabled/retarded etc.

[kgbsquirrel]

That must include retired people.

Alright, lets assume this.

    15–64 years: 67% (male 102,665,043/female 103,129,321)
    65 years and over: 12.8% (male 16,901,232/female 22,571,696) (2010 est.)

Lets also disregard people like my Dad who worked until he was well into his 70's (damn statistic skewing old codger )

That removes about 39.5 Million people from this equation (but not from the welfare numbers also spoken of it the article, obviously). Subtracting that from the original figure of 82 million unemployed adults renders 42.5 Million, or roughly 20.5% of the 15-64 age demographic as list by the Census Bureau.

[AmbulanceDriver]

I would guess the best interpretation would be a comparison of this stat with previous data.  Has the ratio changed?  Is it better/worse/same?

[sumpnz]

Once you account for high school and college students, stay at home parents, retired folks, the disbled, etc that number doesn't sound nearly so bad.  Unemployment is still too highbut it is disingenuous to make it sound like 40+% of adults are out of work involuntarily and that they would take a job if it was offered to them. 

I'd believe a number around 15-17% for that.  But not >40%.

[French G.]

I would agree that it's probably in the 15% range for the actual want a job unemployed. That's still 1 in 6 people, what are we, France? However, I like this picture, it is BLS workforce participation and it goes back to the 40% area. For any twit that says we're in a recovery please review. Workforce participation is at a 30 year low. Now, the last 10 years graphically. Sideways, sideways then around 2008 the line goes bumping down the yellow brick road of prosperity. http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000/

This is neater to me, same stat as far back as they go. Historically labor force participation was below 60% and then a big boom happened starting in the late 60's, probably when June Cleaver said "make your own damn sammich." And now, presto, back to the Carter years. I think the current situation is worse now for any analogue 30 years earlier when you have less people as employed as they'd like to be, no more pension jobs, and a ton of people on public assistance. It may be, and I dunno, no economist that the old numbers from the 50s did not look at rural agrarian jobs that people left when they moved to town. I'm pretty sure that hardly no one was living on credit cards back then so payroll reporting might be a bit??? And, since 1948 have we ever seen a screaming down trend like the one since 2008?



Here is the really fun one, a chart that I can't embed, workforce participation percentage change broken down by age, race, ethnicity. Executive summary, the kids of college age aren't getting jobs, pretty large drops in the 16-19 and 20-24 groups. That to me means more leeching off of someone else, more student debt, more living in mommy's basement etc. http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_303.htm

[sumpnz]

Just a guess but the ramp up that started mid/late 60's might be partly the rise in women working rather than just staying home with the kids.

[French G.]

While I alluded to it with June Cleaver I did some further reading and the big bump was indeed women entering the workforce. Women's participation rate is still moving up, men's down.

[kgbsquirrel]

Nice digging and presentation!

[SADShooter]

European-style yob riots here we come.

[MicroBalrog]

Frankly speaking, one of the changing things in Western Civilization is that people work less. That is to say, a given person spends less years of their own life working.

And this is going to decline further, I expect, with the advent of robotics.

In previous years, we've seen new jobs get created as old ones were automated - but I expect a great acceleration of the rate at which jobs are automated, to the point that new employment will not be created at the same speed.