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 Most of us have heard of U-boats; we’re familiar with Bono’s group – U2; we’ve all made a U-turn; chemists can identify U-235; and the mechanically-inclined can tell the difference between U-bolts and U-joints.
But how many Americans are familiar with the U-6 unemployment rate?
According to the Wall Street Journal, “The U-6 figure includes everyone in the official (unemployment) rate plus ‘marginally attached workers’ — those who are neither working nor looking for work, but say they want a job and have looked for work recently; and people who are employed part-time for economic reasons, meaning they want full-time work but took a part-time schedule instead because that’s all they could find.”
The official employment rate of the U.S. Department of Labor, calculated by the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which is based on a nationwide household survey, includes only those unemployed workers who have looked for a job in the preceeding four weeks. Other unemployed workers, such as those who are discouraged from looking for a job or are marginally employed, are not included in their monthly rate. Accordingly, the U-6 figure is a more accurate assessment of the nation’s unemployment situation.
Also not included in the labor department’s unemployment statistics are those who see their job loss as an opportunity to kick back and smell the roses. The term ‘funemployment’ fits them. According to the Urban Dictionary, funemployment is “The condition of a person who takes advantage of being out of a job to have the time of his life.” Traveling on the cheap, socializing with friends, drinking lattes or margaritas, and indulging in hobbies or recreation (while not pursuing retraining or job opportunities) constitute some funemployment activities, at least until the savings accounts, severance pay, unemployment checks, or handouts from the relatives run out.
So what actually are those without-a-job statistics? The official unemployment rate for September, 2009 is 9.8 percent. The more comprehensive U-6 rate is 17.0 percent, the highest it has been since the Labor Department initiated this statistic in 1994. Why are the discouraged "marginally attached" workers not included in the official rate? Are they not just as unemployed as the "officially unemployed"? Why is there a four-week requirement for qualification? The BLS must have its reasons.
Karen Jensenius and Steven A. Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies have dissected the numbers released by the federal government and conclude that younger and less-educated American workers have fared more poorly in the recent recession than other workers. They tie their joblessness to immigration, both legal and illegal.
In their study “Worse Than It Seems: Broader Measure of Unemployment Shows Bleak Picture,” Jensenius and Camarota write, “What we can say from the data is that those types of workers most in competition with immigrants face the most dire labor market situation. This is consistent with the possibility that immigration has harmed their job prospects.”
Because of the extremely high rates of unemployment among less-educated, they add: “[T]here is no shortage of less-educated workers in the country. If the United States were to enforce immigration laws and encourage illegal immigrants to return to their home countries over time, we’d have an adequate supply … to replace these workers.”
Since the Bureau of Labor Statistics method for measuring employment is not designed to “identify the legal status of workers,” the government agency cannot tell the complete story about the unemployment crisis in the United States. But this we do know: The situation is serious, and getting more so. Current public policy that does little to limit the number of the foreign-born labor force entering our country certainly isn’t going to help matters.
Last year, for example, 2.5 million U.S. workers lost jobs in fields such as high tech, construction, engineering, and the automobile industry. But that didn’t slow down the federal government from bringing in 1.5 million new foreign workers.
Among the few industries adding to their workforce are health care, education, and government, which is not good news for most of the unemployed and underemployed.
As for the "funemployed," — well, their party will soon be over.
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