10% unemployment does not equal 90% employment; there are other categories that all add up to "wants and needs a job, and of working age, but the Labor Department has a whole host of excuses not to count them as being in the labor market." Add all those up (myself included) and 10% unemployment means about 78% employed.
Watch the fireworks if it hits 75%. Or, if the debt ceiling talks completely collapse and the August SSDI checks don't go out, "fireworks" won't even begin to describe what'll happen -- tens of thousands of out of work combat-ready and heavily armed Afghan and Iraq war veterans, and about half a million other people on top of that, only count as "not unemployed" because social workers are using SSDI as the dumping ground for the long-term unemployed.
This is what's so evil about the Econ Board definition of "recession" - as long as US corporate profits are still rising, as long as they're not receding, the US could be at 99.9% unemployed and it still wouldn't count as a recession.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2011-07-12 04:26 am (UTC)Watch the fireworks if it hits 75%. Or, if the debt ceiling talks completely collapse and the August SSDI checks don't go out, "fireworks" won't even begin to describe what'll happen -- tens of thousands of out of work combat-ready and heavily armed Afghan and Iraq war veterans, and about half a million other people on top of that, only count as "not unemployed" because social workers are using SSDI as the dumping ground for the long-term unemployed.
This is what's so evil about the Econ Board definition of "recession" - as long as US corporate profits are still rising, as long as they're not receding, the US could be at 99.9% unemployed and it still wouldn't count as a recession.