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Is The Economy Worse Than We Think?
By JLP | July 15, 2009
Mortimer Zuckerman, chairman and editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report, claims the economy is worse than we think it is and lists 10 reasons why he thinks so. One of his points seems a tad misleading:
The number of workers taking part-time jobs due to the slack economy, a kind of stealth underemployment, has doubled in this recession to about nine million, or 5.8% of the work force. Add those whose hours have been cut to those who cannot find a full-time job and the total unemployed rises to 16.5%, putting the number of involuntarily idle in the range of 25 million.
I don’t think you can count part-timers as being unemployed. Sure, they may prefer to be full-time employees, but they are still employed.
Regardless, his other nine points make sense and the bigger picture of his piece is that the government disguised congressional wish lists as stimulus. In other words, we are spending all this money and it’s not going to do what they promised us it would do and that’s create jobs.
Topics: Credit Crisis | 4 Comments »
July 15th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Husband gets laid off and starts job hunt to find new (high paying) job. Both husband & wife get part-time job to help make ends meet. Once husband finds good paying job — both husband and wife quit their part-time jobs (maybe wife keeps hers if she likes it).
So, I can see how a single laid off person would double the ‘part-time’ workforce numbers.
16.5% unemployed is too high a number and does not even pass simple assertion checks.
July 16th, 2009 at 12:18 am
Getting your take on this issue has given me some insight I didn’t have before
July 16th, 2009 at 8:58 am
Also, some people that already have full time jobs are also picking up part time jobs in addition to their full time job to try to get out of debt or increase their savings.
July 21st, 2009 at 3:49 pm
We sometimes hear of this extra number as the ranks of “under-employed”. In this environment (one where qualified people are more likely to take part-time jobs outside their field in order to get any income) this number highly reflects the number of “part-time” workers still seeking “full-time” jobs. If you take into consideration those that aren’t reflected in the “unemployment rate” and have just given up hope (think of the two income family where one spouse loses his/her job and can’t find another, so choses to stay home and take care of the family until the economy turns around), you probably have a good case to make that 16.5% is a closer reflection of the current employment situation than the simple headline unemployment rate from the BLS upon which most news outlets focus.