Reported unemployment isn’t everything. Everyone seems to have a different definition for unemployment and how that number is reached. For states issuing checks it is the number of people reporting claims for unemployment insurance checks. For others it represents the number of jobs lost.

But what does it really mean? Does it count for the number of people who are underemployed? The underemployed are people working below their skill level in jobs that they are probably over qualified for. It most likely doesn’t count them. Why? If it’s for any reason at all it’s because they are employed, they have job(s), income, and an employer paying the taxes. Does it include people working two part-time jobs to make ends meet? It most likely doesn’t count them either for double the same reason.

Take an arbitrary number of say 9% as an unemployment rate. It doesn’t include people who are not actively searching for work, people who are unable to look for work due to circumstances in their life that prevent them from working, or any of the people working multiple jobs or whom are under employed. So that number that gets bounced around in newspapers, on TV, or online is likely higher than anyone would like to admit. And why shouldn’t it be reported that way? We at the downsized would like nothing more than to hear that unemployment is down or rose less than in months prior. HOWEVER, when it is used to give everyone a warm fuzzy it’s less than what we need. As a false sense of hope it much much less. We as a people need to know what we’re facing and rise as individuals and institutions to meet the challenges of the day that has been presented to us and move forward.

Needless to say, we present this information to provide the greatest amount of knowledge to the people with which to evaluate the deluge of information that we have in our lives. Yes, parts of it are scary, being without a job is scary. It’s not ok out there at the moment. But we have an opportunity to reshape who we are, and what we will be known for as a national economy… We have a chance to be better than we were and if we fail to recognize it, if we continue to prop up business as usual practices WE may not survive it. It’s up to all of us to innovate and to capitalize on the things/services/needs of the world as it exists today. In the words of the catchy Kaiser Permanente ad campaign, “Thrive”.

Related posts:

1. Tracking the Unemployment Trends

See related stories: 2009, statistics, Unemployment

This story was posted on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 for the following departments News from the world, Unemployment