From the “it’s worse than it appears” department: the percentage of men over age 20 with jobs is the lowest it has been since the Bureau of Labor and Statistics started keeping track after World War II. (The fact that the population is aging explains this to a certain degree, but it’s still surprising.)
This is also troubling (via andrewsullivan.com)
The unemployment rate is now 8.5%, which is very bad, and is up sharply from 5.1% a year ago. But just check out U6, the broad measure of underemployement: people who want to get more work than they’ve got, but can’t find it. A year ago — three months into the recession — it stood at 9.3%. Today, it’s risen all the way to 16.2% — an increase of 6.9 percentage points — and no one thinks it’s peaked yet. There are now 9 million “involuntary part-time workers” in America, and rising; these people are, as a rule, spending as little as they possibly can.
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