467,000 more jobs lost in June.

[NJ5]

HappySqurriel said:

One of the things that I always find disapointing about announcements like these is that they point out how poorly statistics like the Unemployment rate are measured ...

The economy lost 465,000 jobs but the unemployment rate only increased by 0.1% even though 465,000 jobs represents (far) more than 0.1% of the workforce. What this means is that we have had a remarkably large number of people (300,000+) leave the workforce because the economy is so bad they have no expectations of finding a job.

This is (obviously) done on purpose, which is why they don't publish the participation rate alongside the unemployment rate; and if they included information like the percentage of the workforce who were working part time, the mean and median wage for employees, and employee confidence in their company the economic picture would be far bleaker.

The unemployment figure which the mainstream media usually reports is U3 unemployment. There's also U4, U5 and U6, which use broader definitions of unemployment.

You can find the more detailed data here:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm

Depending on the definitions, unemployment is between 9.5% and 16.8%. The last figure is U6, which is described as:

"

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

"