I am afraid you are mistaken. The methods to measure unemployment have always under gone changes large and small with constant tweaks. How ever the Bureau of Labor Statistics measure more than one type of unemployment and you can show a huge difference by the selection of which type(s) you select to report.

They generally do not count those who have given up on finding work or have taken part time employment, found a way to go on disability etc. and are thus not seeking employment on a regular basis. This would include those who ran out of benefits and no longer report to their local office, but have still not found work.

Today this group who are no longer seeking employment, and not included in the "normal" unemployment statistics is much larger than it has been in recent decades.

My wife is one of these. She lost her job as a surgical RN (she was OR Charge Nurse at a local medical center) and then no one else wanted to hire a late 50s OR nurse when younger ones are available at much lower pay rates in the LA Metro Area. The only chances she had were too far away, or even out of state. So she has been out of work for 3 years and is now 61, even less likely to get hired. We are lucky that I get one large pension from over 3 decades of teaching, a couple of small annuities I stashed away over the years, a small pension from having worked 13 years in the supermarket industry, a small (10%) disability from VA plus a bit under $400 a month SS from my time in retail food and the military. We have managed to get by and even keep our daughter in UCLA (graduates this summer). But our saving/emergency nest egg has gone from aprx $80,000 (that included an equity loan on our house) down to less than $17,000 total including our checking account and it is only the 4th so this includes all of this months payments that came in in the last few days. Jasmine will have to go far in debt for Med School now that she has finished pre-med. We can't afford to pay her way anymore, she will have to do it on loans, grants etc. Because my wife was still working and her last few years made $130K plus when Jasmine started pre-med she qualified for no grants or aid. Since my wife lost her job they have given Jasmine a "middle class" scholarship of about $500 a quarter. Student health insurance is more than that per quarter.

This is from the Huffinton Post Business department. Not a radical right wing racist group is it? But in the article the author does reference both right and left wing sources as well as the man who used to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics (who is himself a conservative).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/19/unemployment-rate-wrong_n_3619152.html

I am so tired of mental midgets making claims like "We're not actually at 5% unemployment, that number excludes those who've given up looking and hides underemployed numbers"

We are using the SAME EXACT METHODOLOGY to determine unemployment that has been used for DECADES. The SAME EXACT METHODOLOGY that was used when Ford was president, SAME EXACT METHODOLOGY that was used when Carter was president, SAME EXACT METHODOLOGY that was used when when Reagan was president, SAME EXACT METHODOLOGY that was used when when George H. W. Bush was president, SAME EXACT METHODOLOGY that was used when Clinton was president, SAME EXACT METHODOLOGY that was used when George W Bush was president, SAME EXACT METHODOLOGY that is used while Obama is president.


The only difference between Obama and all those other six presidents is the color of his skin, so I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THIS IS NOT RACISM.