P.S. if you work ONE HOUR in the ‘week’ that is calculated, EVEN BABYSITTING (which they specifically say), you are ‘employed.
I calculate the real unemployment rate as those receiving UI payments, those whose payments have run out but are still looking for work, those of working age who are no longer looking for work and receiving some sort of government assistance (including those hardcore welfare cases who have never worked and never will work). If working Americans realized how few their number really is and how many others that they have to support, they’d understand how the deficit has exploded the way it has. And with the baby boomers now entering retirement years and starting to draw on Social Security and Medicare, the demographic vice will tighten around America’s neck. If you add up all the people in America and take out the young, spouses who do not work outside the home, the retired, the disabled, the welfare people, the unemployed and those who earn too little to pay federal tax, the actual number of Americans paying federal income tax is fewer than 100 million. Fewer than a third of Americans are carrying the can for the entire nation. It’s not sustainable and the situation is only going to get worse.
Yes, but the majority of the people on unemployment don’t report cash jobs.