By John Williams – Re-Blogged From http://www.ShadowStats.com
Counting All Discouraged/Displaced Workers, May 2016 Unemployment Rose to About 23.0%. Discussed frequently in the regular ShadowStats Commentaries on monthly unemployment conditions, what removes headline-unemployment reporting from common experience and broad, underlying economic reality, simply is definitional. To be counted among the U.S. government’s headline unemployed (U.3), an individual has to have looked actively for work within the four weeks prior to the unemployment survey conducted for the Bureau of Labor Statistic (BLS). If the active search for work was in the last year, but not in the last four weeks, the individual is considered a “discouraged worker” by the BLS, and not counted in the headline labor force.
ShadowStats defines that group as “short-term discouraged workers,” as opposed to those who, after one year, no longer are counted as “discouraged” by the government. Instead, they enter the realm of “long– term discouraged workers,” those displaced by extraordinary economic conditions, including regional/local businesses activity affected negatively by trade agreements or by other factors shifting U.S. productive assets offshore, as defined and counted by ShadowStats (see the extended comments in the ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment Measure).
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