[FITZ]

Does that chart take into account some of the manipulations in reporting unemployment? The Clinton administration changed the way those figures were to be reported so that if someone works just a part-time job with a few hours, they are considered unemployed. You can make $500 a month, be living in government subsidized housing, get your food stamps, Medicaid, etc and be counted as employed. Plus those numbers never count the permanent welfare class and I doubt they count the NAFTA displaced workers because the government has them in "job retraining" programs.

[Beck_isright]

Very good points. The Clintonian revisions to the way economic figures are "created" distorted everything. I'm afraid it will be up to the historians to fix the mess. And I'm fearful to see what they really might say, especially with regards to percentage of growth of government programs against the GDP.

[A. Pole]

You can make $500 a month, be living in government subsidized housing, get your food stamps, Medicaid, etc and be counted as employed.

I assume that huge and growing number of prisoners are not unemployed either (especially that they work for cents, undercutting the free workers, while being supported by taxpayers). BTW, prisons are counted as subsidized housing (another statistical peculiarity to remember).

[sarcasm]

The stats are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I'm sure that the include both the Clinton and Bush manipulations. Note that the way unemployment was calculated changed again in January 2003. Remember how the unemployment rate dropped in January?

[Ed_in_NJ]

None of the figures ('cause nobody's counting) reflect the fulltime hi-tech worker who was earning $100K that is now a fulltime hi-tech worker who is earning $50K.

[lelio]

...and be counted as employed
Not to mention that if you go from being a Boeing machnist / engineer to working at WalMart as a greeter your influence on the unemployment number is the same.
In fact, it probably will increase the working hours / week figure as you'll have to work two jobs now.