For October’s unemployment numbers, CNSNews.com resorted to its usual tricks of distortion. Its main story, by Susan Jones, once again plays up the labor force participation rate, even though it’s not a meaningful measure of employment, and obscures the fact that most people who do not have a job are retired baby boomers and students who aren’t looking for one. Michael W. Chapman contributes the usual sidebar touting the high black unemployment rate without mentioning the fact that black unemployment has historically been double that of whites.
Chapman repeated a twist this month he first introduced in September: an article claiming a “real unemployment rate.” Unlike in September, when Chapman asserted that a misleading number provided by Gallup was the “real” one, Chapman this time declares the U-6 rate to be the “real” rate.
In fact, it’s not an unemployment rate at all because it counts people who are employed — as Chapman himself notes, the U-6 rate includes “marginally attached workers plus total employed part time for economic reasons.”
While the U-6 rate may offer a more nuanced picture of the employment situation, it’s not an “unemployment rate” as Chapman insists.