Americans think the unemployment rate is 32 percent

The latest jobs report showed the unemployment rate was at its lowest level in six years, 5.8 percent.

But Americans aren't convinced that things are nearly that good. In a recent Ipsos-MORI poll, 1,001 Americans were asked, "Out of every 100 people of working age, how many do you think are unemployed and looking for work?" Their average response was 32. That's almost 26 percentage points higher than the 6.1-percent jobless rate in August, when the poll was conducted.

Americans are way, way off here. But they aren't alone. Here's how other countries' average estimated unemployment rates stack up to their actual unemployment rates:

To be fair, it's possible that question wording matters here...though "out of work and looking for work" is the most broadly used definition of unemployment, people may be also considering their discouraged-worker friends who have given up the search. Still, even when you include discouraged and other marginally attached workers, even the broadest definition  of unemployment in August was only 12 percent.

But moreover, unemployment is still a big problem, and those high guesses may reflect that. The job market is simply painful for many Americans right now, so to many people, it really might feel like the jobless rate is much higher.

This all doesn't just matter because people are off. It matters because the degree to which people perceive problems guides how they make political decisions. (Not that Congress has been doing much about boosting jobs, as Ezra Klein wrote earlier this year.)

Update: This post was updated to provide more context and analysis about the jobless rate.

...the GDP would be negative for the last year and reflect the Depression.

That is a brilliant observation! I know they've been lying to us but I had not considered that the growth rate was just another lie. I read somewhere that real income per American has been going down so it would make sense that National output as a whole be negative as well. As much as I'd like to think I'm onto their scams it's annoying to find out they succeeded in fooling me about this.

US population 1/1/14 - 317 million
Labor force 1/1/14 - 154 million
Employed 1/1/08 - 144 million
DOL unemployment rate 1/1/14 - 7.0

US population 1/1/08 - 303 million (my estimate)
Labor force 1/1/08 - 153 million
Employed 1/1/08 - 145 million
DOL unemployment rate 1/1/08 - 5.4

Population up 14 million, labor force up 1 million? If it goes up 7 million, then unemployed goes from 10 million to 17 million and rate goes to 11.9. Not as bad as I thought, but still BS from the feds.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2013/12/31/us-population-2014-317-million-and-71-billion-in-the-world
http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet
http://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table

That’s actually a pretty accurate “gut-reflection” of reality, despite the fact that the article was written chiefly to mock the intelligence of the American public and lecture them about what “real” unemployment statistics are.

The fact of the matter is the current BLS U3 and U6 figures are farcical — in no way, shape or form do these highly selective and misleading yardsticks measure actual unemployment. In prior decades, before rules changes to how such figures are calculated and prior to the intentional redefinition of what constitutes “unemployed”, the unemployment figures put out by the BLS much more closely matched the realities of unemployment experienced by the American public.

Case in point, back in 1994 for the BLS defined long-term discouraged job-seekers out of the unemployment figures. Been looking for a job for too many months? Guess what?! You’re no longer unemployed! Isn’t that grand?

If we actually calculated unemployment figures as we did during the Carter administration, the current unemployment figures would be well above 20%.

But, there was too much incentive to politicize the process of collecting and reporting economic data. If you’re a politician, why worry about actually doing something difficult like ensuring that your cockamamie hair-brained populist schemes to get votes DON’T end up destroying the economy? It’s a hell of a lot easier to have your appointees in the BLS fudge the rules a bit to define-away more than half of inflation and unemployment, and get your sycophants in the press to lecture the public about how STUPID they must be to think unemployment and inflation are high.

Probably because only 68 percent (and maybe 64%) or so of those able to work are working - which leaves 32 percent unemployed by common sense math, unlike the heavily manipulated “real” unemployment rate number.

During the real Depression they used the common sense number and that only went to 26-28 percent. So this is Great Depression 2.0 on steroids.

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