One of the things I enjoy doing while being unemployed is to read just about anything that talks about unemployment. If you follow the daily news like I do, then you already know that according to the talking figure heads, the recession is over for the most part. However, job recovery is running a little late. Companies are still somewhat leery about hiring, and in some cases there are companies that are still streamlining operations by adding more members to the jobless nation. It is great that the recession has been officially declared over, however not so great news if you are unemployed like me and haven’t been able to get one interview, let alone find a job.

As you have probably already heard by now, the big news about unemployment is that the UR “Unemployment Rate” is hovering around 10.2 percent nationwide. I remember the good ole days when I felt much better about my job prospects and the rate hovered around 8 or 9 percent. I guess single digit “UR” is more soothing than a double digit unemployment rate. How can this be happening, I ask myself. The stimulus money is being distributed “wink wink”, confidence in the stock market is growing, companies are….well pretty much doing what they have been doing for the past two years….cutting costs wherever they see fit. As I stated earlier, most economists agree that historical data dictates that job recovery is usually 6 months to a year behind the initial recovery of the economy. All of this leads me to disclose a dirty little secret about the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate has been double digit for a long time. One of things that I fondly remember, while studying Statistical Research Methods “for my now useless BS degree in Mathematics,” is that numbers can be easily manipulated to serve an agenda.

The unemployment rate “10.2%”, that you hear about on your favorite local news show, only accounts for those individuals who are submitting job claims on a weekly basis. According to the USBLS (I am an acronym fanatic) “US Bureau of Labor and Statistics”, the jobless nation is 15.7 million people and growing. There are 2.4 million jobs available at the moment. Crunching the numbers, if you are seeking employment, you have a 15.2% chance of landing a job according to the data. As great as these numbers may sound, (excuse my sarcasm) the real unemployment rate is around 19%, with 30 million people looking for full time employment. Before you accuse me of pulling numbers out of thin air, allow me to explain.

As stated earlier, the unemployment rate of 10.2% only accounts for those individuals who are filing weekly unemployment claims. The unemployment rate does not take into account those individuals (5.6 million) who have exhausted their unemployment benefits or have stopped looking, discouraged, and those individuals (9.3 million) working part-time in hopes of finding a full time job. Crunching the numbers once again, realistically the jobless nation is 30 million and growing. The true unemployment rate is around 19.2%. This means that nearly one fifth of all employable individuals are either unemployed, under-employed or have given up entirely.