I've written a few times about Leo Hindery, a former CEO of major firms, who has some sensible ideas about our economy. Despite being in the 1%, he has ideas as to how the country can work better for the 99%.
The first thing is to accept reality. Hindery thinks that the unemployment rate is 14.3%, not the 7.6% reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The difference is attributable to two types of workers: marginally attached and part-time-of-necessity.
He defines marginally attached workers as those who, "while wanting and available for jobs, have not searched for work in the past four weeks but have searched for work in the past twelve months." There are 2,600,000 of them, including 1.0 million "discouraged workers" who did not look for work specifically because "they believe there are no jobs available or none for which they would qualify."
Part-time-of-necessity workers are workers unable to find full-time jobs or who've had their hours cut back. These 8,200,000 workers are often referred to as the "underemployed".
When you add both of these types to the BLS numbers, you wind up with 22,600,000, or 14.3% unemployed.
How can one say that the economy is coming back? It may be for the 1%, but not the 99%.
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