California's Jobless Rate Drops Below '08 Levels

[Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by whell

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/econom...-slack-remains

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' most comprehensive alternative measure of unemployment and underemployment (which it calls U6) includes the unemployed, the marginally attached and those involuntarily working part-time. It stood at 11 percent in February, 2.2 percentage points higher than at the start of the recession. By that measure, about 17.5 million people are unemployed or underemployed, or twice the 8.7 million people in the official unemployment measure.

Standing out among the unemployed are the long-term unemployed, who have been looking for a job for more than 6 months. They represent more than 31 percent of the unemployed (the largest figure in the half century before the Great Recession was 26 percent). At over 1.7 percent, long-term unemployment is still twice what it was at the start of the recession.

Just as unemployment remains too high, employment is still too low. The share of the population with a job, known as the employment-to-population ratio, reflects both the unemployment rate and the labor force participation rate (the share of the population working or actively looking for work). The sharp rise in unemployment in the Great Recession caused the employment-to-population ratio to fall about four percentage points to levels last seen in the 1980s; declining labor force participation kept it from rising from 2010 through 2013 even as the unemployment rate fell. And it has risen only modestly over the past year as labor force participation has stopped falling but remains low.

You're absolutely right Whell. The Right Wing trickle down economic experiment that has been going on since 1980 has been an abject failure.