Today’s New York Times Business column discusses how the federal government’s unemployment rate is misleading because it does not include unemployed people who “do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior four weeks, and are currently available for work,” which was the criteria for being unemployed that the Bureau of Labor Statistics established way back in the 1870s.
The “actively looking for work” distinction is important because the unemployment rate should not count people like stay-at-home moms, dot-com millionaires, 20-something trust-fund slackers, and retirees. But this also means that the 5 percent unemployment rate that politicians often cite does not include prime-age people who just can’t compete in today’s marketplace and have plumb given up. Think of the coal miners in West Virginia, or the furniture tradesmen of North Carolina. The article calls these people nonemployed. (By the way, nor does unemployment rate account for the 1% of the American population that is imprisoned, but that’s another issue).
Since becoming disemployed, I have fallen into a routine where I leave the house between 10am and 1pm. This is prime time for us jobless folk to do our errands while the rest of the populace is settled into their offices. I see mothers pushing baby carriages or leading their babbling toddlers on the sidewalk. I see retirees bantering with store clerks and steering their Buicks down the street at 15mph. I also see a few, but not many, people in the prime of their life. It could be their day off, or they could be a second or third shift worker, or they could be “between jobs” like me.
But I live in Boston, an economically vibrant area where anyone willing and able to work can find something. I know there are places in America where there are no jobs, and I shudder to think about that sense of hopelessness. One factory shuts down and the entire town suffers. People compete for jobs at a Wal-mart, or do odd jobs to pick up cash, but they cannot find a good, steady job if it does not exist. They are nonemployed, idled, waiting, or not waiting.
