The newspapers announced the new unemployment rate for March to be 8.5%. But in a broader definition of the malady, we could actually be experiencing a number closer to 15.6%. An unemployed person is defined as someone "without work, available for work, and [who] has actively searched for work." The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines that as the U3 measurement. But, an alternative measurement known as U6 includes people not "actively" looking for work -- referred to by the BLS as the "marginally attached," meaning people are unemployed but have not looked for work in the past month because they got discouraged and gave up. U-6 also measures the number of people who aren't able to find enough work, i.e. people who are working part-time when they want to work full-time, called the "under-employed". According to this calculus, 15.6% of the labor force fits this broader description. Click on the title above to feel the impact of these labor shortfalls on the U.S. economy.
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