How many times have you seen this kind of statement in the last few years? : "The official unemployment rate cited by the government is 7.8% but the REAL unemployment rate is 14.4% if you include the underemployed." Of course the underemployed and marginally attached workers are out there when the economy is good too. When unemployment was 5% were people running around making sure we were all aware that the 'REAL' rate was 9.2%? Not that I recall.
I pulled the numbers for a few years back off the BLS Table A-15 charts Here's a look at the official unemployment rate versus the larger rate including marginally attached and underemployed part time workers from 1994 to 2012 :
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| (click for larger size) |
Those numbers are monthly seasonally adjusted figures for
U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate)
versus
U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force
As you can see in the chart the broader U-6 unemployment measure plus the marginally attached and underemployed workers is generally a few points higher than the simple unemployment measure. The numbers are roughly proportional as well. The marginal and underemployed number is around 60-80% of the unemployment number.
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