Unemployment will soon count one more

In terms of job creation Bush is the worst prez. ever. GOP presidents are never all that good, tending to create 1 million jobs a year while Democrats tend to create 2 million a year. But we shouldn't blame presidents for that, should we? Why not? They take the credit.

The rest of this posting discusses how the unemployment rate is computed. Careful, now. There are several. The one most widely reported (and the least meaningful) is what the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls U3: "total unemployed as a percent of the civilian labor force." There is also the more accurate U6, which is: total unemployed + "marginally attached workers" (those who had looked for work, but not in the last 4 weeks) + "those employed part-time for economic reasons" (those who would like a full-time job but can't get one) as a percent of the workforce. At the moment U6 = 13.5% (closing in on 1 in 7). And some economists think it is low.