by | February 15, 2012 · 6:57 am

Joblessness in America

Chrissy’s Site Bites: http://news.webshots.com/photo/2696051620056011884dNeTPu

Click on graphic to embiggen.

This is based on Gallup figures for mid-February, where they report the percent of Adult Americans who are fully employed, underemployed, unemployed or none of the above. I dropped out the nones (17%) who I assume are unattached to the work force for whatever reason (e.g., SAHMs, students, disabled, retired), then converted the balance to two numbers: fully employed (77%) + not fully employed (23%) = 100%.

3 Comments

Filed under Economy, Unemployment

3 responses to “Joblessness in America”

  1. chrissythehyphenated's avatar chrissythehyphenated
    February 15, 2012 at 11:23 am

    I found an explanation of the government’s unemployment calculations here:

    http://www.wealthbuildingcourse.com/real-unemployment-rate-20-rising.html

    “Bill Clinton was interested in legacies early on in his presidency. By changing the official unemployment formula to sweep away the so called discouraged workers, he attained a record low unemployment level not seen in decades. The reason for his changing the official unemployment calculation formula had a lot to do with “the economy stupid,” as he was fond of saying. He wanted the numbers to look better than they actually were.”

    Like

  2. Ting's avatar Ting
    February 15, 2012 at 10:42 pm

    I know that sign the guy is holding in the photo should make me angry, but it really just makes me sad. Honestly, I can’t blame a lot of the more uninformed people for voting for him. I know people like him, who work hard and are not all that well informed but believe they have enough information to make their vote. I used to be that way, too. I have always paid attention to the business news, but it wasn’t until the last 12-15 years that I realized how intertwined the business climate had become with the political climate.

    If you couple that with the increasing unreliability of our media outlets and it becomes almost a full time job to decipher it all. I don’t know how your average family can possibly find the time to winnow out the relevant facts to make a good decision. I know I sound like a one-trick pony, but that is one of the reasons that I am so sick that Sarah Palin is not running because I know that if she was running she could connect and get the message out to people of good will who just haven’t had the time or the inclination to investigate. She commands attention that the other candidates could not hope for in their wildest dreams.

    How do we reach the people like this guy with the sign, who have not lost their jobs yet? I don’t see Mitt or Rick or Newt or Ron Paul being able to do it.

    Like