We know the unemployment rate is high, and has been so for a long time, way too long for the many millions who have been unemployed for years.  Lest we forget, given the “go find a job” chorus coming out of Republican pie holes, the people included in the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics employment report are looking for work, as BLS explains the report “includes all jobless persons who are available to take a job and have actively sought work in the past four weeks.

There is a large contingent of the unemployed that is not included in the monthly report, however.  For example,

• Marginally attached are those persons not in the labor force who want and are available for work, and who have looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months, but were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.
• Discouraged workers were not currently looking for work specifically because they believed no jobs were available for them or there were none for which they would qualify.
• Total employed part time for economic reason, including persons who indicated that they would like to work full time but were working part time (1 to 34 hours) because of an economic reason, such as their hours were cut back or they were unable to find full-time jobs.

Alternative Measures of Labor Underutilization for States, Fourth Quarter of 2010 through Third Quarter of 2011 Averages

Six alternative measures of labor underutilization have long been available on a monthly basis from the Current Population Survey (CPS) for the United States as a whole. They are published in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly Employment Situation news release. (See table 15.) The official concept of unemployment (as measured in the CPS by U-3 in the U-1 to U-6 range of alternatives) includes all jobless persons who are available to take a job and have actively sought work in the past four weeks. This concept has been thoroughly reviewed and validated since the inception of the CPS in 1940. The other measures are provided to data users and analysts who want more narrowly (U-1 and U-2) or broadly (U-4 through U-6) defined measures.

The six state measures are based on the same definitions as those published for the United States:

U-1, persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force;

U-2, job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force;

U-3, total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (this is the definition used for the official unemployment rate);

U-4, total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers;

U-5, total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other marginally attached workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers; and

U-6, total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers.

U-6 is also referred to as the underemployment rate.  Consider how much income is drained from the economy

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