Recently, the U.S. government released unemployment statistics showing an unemployment rate of 10.2%. That seems pretty bad, but things are actually much worse. That 10.2% doesn't include everyone. People who have given up looking for a job, no longer receive unemployment benefits or are working a part time job while looking for a better job are not counted. Read on to see how bad things actually are...
The government (Bureau of Labor Statistics) publishes a much broader measure of unemployment as well. For some reason, this is never reported in main stream media. This measure, know as u-6 shows unemployment at around 17.5%. Even this broad measure is understating the problem.
All of this uses a mathematical model where the BLS fudges the numbers to account for "seasonal effects." These supposedly include manufacturing, farming, construction and other jobs where seasonal layoffs are common. The problem is that this model tends to be way off when unemployment gets severe.
If we use the same measure of unemployment used during the Great Depression, we get an unemployment number of around 22%. I know this because a man named John Williams actually goes through the trouble to look at the data and run the numbers according to the old formula. He also tracks a bunch of other government data which is misreported. You can see his take on how bad the numbers are by visiting his website: http://www.shadowstats.com