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by Chriss W. Street

I warned last week that a recession and higher unemployment were about to hit the U.S. economy. On Tuesday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis cut their estimate of growth in the third quarter ending September from 2.5% to 2%. Then on Wednesday, the Federal Reserve rocked financial markets by forcing America’s 31 largest U.S. banks to “stress test” balance sheets to determine their capability to withstand an 8% drop in the economy; which would cause home prices to plunge by 21%, and unemployment rate to jump to 13%.



I illuminated in my report that U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has been under-counting unemployment by at least 2%. For a nation reporting 154.4 million workers; this means the 13.9 million reportedly unemployed should actually be 17 million. Given only 12.8 million were unemployed at the 1933 peak of the Great Depression, when the undercounting and the Fed’s stress test are added the total is 23.2 million unemployed; almost double the Great Depression.


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Take this for an argument for either side, but the way they measure unemployment today is not simply those over the age of 16 who are allowed to work and those under retirement age (65) that are not are considered unemployed. The labor force is defined by wiki as: "In economics, a labor force or labour force is a region's combined civilian workforce, including both the employed and unemployed.[1]

Normally, the labor force of a country (or other geographic entity) consists of everyone of working age (typically above a certain age (around 14 to 16) and below retirement (around 65) who are participating workers, that is people actively employed or seeking employment. People not counted include students, retired people, stay-at-home parents, people in prisons or similar institutions, people employed in jobs or professions with unreported income, as well as discouraged workers who cannot find work."

That being said the numbers do not simply represent those who are with out work in the US.

Another important piece to consider is during the years of the great depression, women were not apart of the workforce until the very end and even then there were so few the numbers are different, consider that with population increase and we have a lot more to consider when comparing these figures.



No doubt things will become tough for a broader range of people; and this coming summer...  Well...  I'm happy I don't live in the city