Drum roll please, and the real

unemployment number for California

is 20.3 %

A rising tide of social misery
David Walsh

WSWS July 16, 2009

Contrary to Obama administration and media claims about the recession “easing,” millions of working people in America are losing their jobs, earnings and health care benefits at an accelerating pace.
While executives at Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and other financial giants prepare to pay themselves billions of dollars this year in salaries and bonuses, life has continued to become more and more difficult for a broad layer of the population.
The New York Times pointed out on Wednesday that in California and a number of other states, “one out of every five people who would like to be working full time is not now doing so.”
The official jobless rate of 9.5 percent excludes both those who have stopped looking for jobs because local conditions are so bleak and those obliged to accept part-time employment.
If these unemployed and underemployed were included, the real jobless rate in the country’s most populous state, California, for example, would be 20.3 percent, according to the Times. In Oregon it would be 23.5 percent, in Michigan and Rhode Island, 21.5 percent, and in South Carolina, 20.5 percent. The figure would be just below 20 percent in Tennessee, Nevada and a number of “states that have relied heavily on manufacturing and housing.”
Given that the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ national jobless rate is skewed, for political reasons, to minimize the actual conditions, various analysts step in and attempt to come up with a “real unemployment” number.
The Center for Labor Market Studies at Boston’s Northeastern University places the current jobless rate at 18.2 percent, higher than the official figure on the eve of World War II. John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics puts the “Alternative Unemployment” rate at 20.6 percent. Other analysts calculate an “Effective Unemployment” figure of 18.7 percent. Whatever the precise number, the army of unemployed is large and swelling. A great many lives have already been devastated. ( learn more at )