Anyone who thinks the REAL unemployment rate is as low as it was in ‘69 is dreaming. In those days engineering departments were often staffed with high school graduates who carried business cards with the title engineer on them. I know because I was one of those high school graduates. I was twenty five and I had a Navy electronics certificate but my job was not in electronics, I had ZERO college. People who had engineering degrees were just not available so they trained people on the job.
Yes, and there are many, non-establishment experts who can explain all that. LBJ was the first to politicize the number, asking the BLS to keep running those numbers until they got the number he wanted. So they use a complicated methodology designed to make the numbers higher than they were. So any government since that time has had a +2% bias in the numbers. And then apparently Clinton had the BLS do funny stuff with those numbers again, maybe now making the false number show a 4% bias to the upside.
Which also makes the numbers for comparison reasons to other countries completely apples to oranges. Canada has its own methodology, Japan has its own, Germany its own, ect... Which is why the financial media is absurd when it compares those numbers.
[People who had engineering degrees were just not available so they trained people on the job.]
Heady Days.