Unemployment calculations used to include people who are underemployed(part time), as well as people who are chronically unemployed because they can't find the job they are trained to do.

Current calculations call the guy with a phd, as employed even if that is at walmart or Mcdonalds.

The numbers they use now basically only count those who have filed unemployment claims, and don't continue counting you after your claim expires.

Many of the people who are unemployed now are ineligible for unemployment due to the nature of the jobs they had, and are not counted. This would include the small business owner who goes broke, and his employees if he was not paying into the system on their behalf.

The thousands of trucking owner operators who have gone broke are not counted, and no one even has any idea how many of them there are.

In the first three quarters of 08, 875 trucking companies employing 129,000 drivers went broke. That doesn't include the support workers with those companies, add around another 15,000. That only counts companies with more than 30 trucks, and incidentally accounts for 6% of the total truckload capacity of this country.

Now consider that 90% of the industry is comprised of fleets with 5 or fewer trucks that are not included in that #. The owner of these companies cannot collect unemployment and many drivers in this industry are paid as contract workers and therefore cannot collect. None of these is included in the current figures.

The unemployment figures they use now are a joke compared to the old system. Reagan did this to simply show improvements that weren't there.

Most of the economists I have heard recently say the nationwide numbers are somewhere between 10 and 15% realistically.

Of course you won't hear that on Fox Noise, as most of them deny that there is even a real problem with the economy.

By the way, that phd working at walmart will also be ineligible for unemployment in most states because very few of walmarts employees are considered full time.

On one hand, some of the problems are not as bad as some in the media would have you believe, but some of the problems are being downplayed bigtime.

BHSC