Hidden Jobless
The unemployment rate creeps up to 9.7 percent when adjusted to include the underemployed and the “discouraged,” the official term for unemployed workers who stop looking for new jobs, according to the Los Angeles Times. The newspaper analyzed figures released by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Labor Statistics to come up with the 9.7 percent unemployment rate, which is up from last year’s rate of 9.4 percent. According to the BLS’ November figures, there are 8.7 million people in the United States who are unemployed and looking for work, 4.9 million part-time workers who are looking for full-time work, and 1.5 million “discouraged” workers who are unemployed and looking for new jobs but did not look for work last month.
