Figures don't lie...

But they don't always represent reality.  Take the latest unemployment figure of 7.2%.  I've pointed out before that Leo Hindery doesn't think this number really represents the number of unemployed. If you add in marginally attached and part-time-of-necessity workers, the rate is much higher, perhaps double. Now we are seeing others question the the emphasis placed on the unemployment rate. 

For example, the Labor Department also publishes the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. It’s a monthly reading of job openings, hiring and separation, and it provides a ratio of the number of people looking for work to the jobs available. In a healthy economy, that ratio should be close to one worker for every job opening.  In the latest reading, the ratio was about 2.9 available workers for every job opening. That marked the first time the ratio fell below 3-to-1 in five years.

Then, there is the Employment-Population Ratio, which tells how successfully the economy is providing jobs, and in September it stood at 58.6 percent. That’s exactly where it stood in April, pretty much where it’s been since the start of 2010 and far below the 63.4 percent in December 2006 that was the high for the past decade.  Put another way, 41.4 percent of the 245.2 million working-age adults weren’t employed in September, and that percentage has been constant for almost five years. 

So, as Hindery tells us, we are not counting workers who have dropped out or never entered the workforce, and there may be 5,000,000 of them.