Lies, Damn Lies

The latest [US] BLS employment situation report states 4.5% unemployment, and 167,000 jobs created in December … the headline “unemployment” number we see every month isn’t the unemployment number — it’s one of many, in a creative hierarchy introduced circa 1995.

Headline unemployment 4.5%
Unemployed+discouraged 4.7%
The above+marginal 5.3%
Above+part time 8.0%

What if we were to actually count [criminal justice inductees] as unemployed?

Headline unemployment 4.5%
Headline+prison population 5.8%
Headline+all corrections 9.2%
All-unempl.+prison pop. 9.3%
All-unempl.+all corr. 12.7%

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