by kublikhan » Fri 01 Feb 2013, 18:33:29
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'D')on't you even know that the stat for unemployment was revamped ca. 30 years ago? The category for "discouraged worker" didn't exist back in the depression. If you count the millions of unemployed "discouraged workers" now ---as they were included in the depression ----our current unemployment rate is way over 10% right now ----just like the Great Depression..
Actually I did know about the changes to how unemployment is measured. Infact, I have posted on this topic several times as well. Here's just one of my posts on this topic. It points out that no matter how you measure unemployment, things were much worse during the Great Depression. Even the recovery back then had much higher levels of unemployment and underemployment than now:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', 'T')he actual unemployment rate may indeed by higher than the official rate, but it is not true to say this is the worst labor market in US history. The Great Depression was easily worse than this, even if measuring U6 instead of U3, or using a broader labor market comparison:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') frequent meme propounded in the economic blogosphere is that U6 unemployment, running near 17% now, is a truer measure (and there are good reasons to believe it is), so that means we have unemployment already approaching Great Depression levels of 25%. Left out of the comparison is the fact that U3 and U6 measurements didn't exist during the 1930s. So, is the 25% unemployment peak for the Great Depression a fair comparison to U6 unemployment today?
N. Andrews compared historical versions of unemployment statistics with the modern U3 and U6 versions. Based on that research, he was able to generate a mathematical formula to calculate U3 and U6 unemployment for the entire period since 1900. He found that at the peak of the Great Depression, U3 was 25.2%. U6 was 37.6%. Here's the resulting graph:

If Nelson is correct, the notion in the blogosphere that current U6 unemployment levels are close to those of the Great Depression appears to be false, and indeed, far off the mark. Using Nelson's methodology, our current U3 and U6 unemployment are both very close to the figures in 1930, which is bad enough. But they are less than half of the unemployment that existed at the peak of the Great Depression.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') good deal of commentary has addressed similarities between the recession that began in December 2007 and the Great Depression. Comparisons between the two have extended beyond conditions in financial markets to conditions in the labor market. The analogy appears to be fueled by projections that the unemployment rate could reach double digits in the coming months. Little if any comparative labor market research has been undertaken, however. To address the situation, this report analyzes the experiences of workers during the 1930s,
A labor market analysis of the Great Depression finds that many workers were unemployed for much longer than one year. Of those fortunate to have jobs, many experienced cutbacks in hours (i.e., involuntary part-time employment).
there remain substantial differences between the Great Depression and the current recession:
• In 1933, at the depth of the Depression, one in four workers was unemployed. In contrast, the unemployment rate had risen to 9.4% by May 2009. The number of jobs on nonfarm payrolls fell 24.3% between 1929 and 1933. Thus far during the current recession, firms have cut nonfarm employment by 4.3%. The first 17 months of the ongoing recession compare favorably with the first two years of the Depression as well.
• In addition to the greater magnitude of unemployment and job loss during the early 1930s as compared with today, the implications of being unemployed have changed much in the intervening years. One reason for the altered situation facing today’s unemployed is the increased prevalence of families in which both spouses work. Another is the deeper drop in earnings and hours worked that occurred during the Depression. And, the social safety net that is now available to displaced workers and their families did not exist before the onset of the Great Depression.