Thread: Report: Unemployment Near Depression Highs

Report: Unemployment Near Depression Highs

Monday, March 9, 2009 10:38 AM

The U.S. unemployment rate would be 19.1 percent, close to the level during the Great Depression, using the methodology that prevailed 80 years ago, according to Shadowstats.com.

According to the official Labor Department figures, the jobless rate jumped to a 25-year high of 8.1 percent in February.

However, John Williams, from ShadowStats, argues that measurement changes implemented over the years make it impossible to compare the current unemployment rate with that seen during the Great Depression, when unemployment peaked at 25 percent.

"Such would be my best estimate of a rate that would be comparable to the Great Depression readings," said Williams of the 19.1 percent reading.

Still, he noted that the Depression peak itself may have been underestimated because it was restricted to "non-farm" payrolls at a time when agricultural labor still represented more than a quarter of the economy

http://moneynews.newsmax.com/economy/un ... 89868.html

This is any government: if the results are uncomfortable for re-election, or reappointment or showing serious problems with current policies, change the rules. I went ballistic (quietly) going to a water seminar hosted by the state Department of Environmental Protection in Ft. Myers, FL, that decided new rules, even though our rivers and water ways turned green with algae, that they would divide each river and stream into segments, and even if there was a toxic spill in one segment, it did not mean the segment was polluted since, under new rules, it would have to be polluted 3/4 of the year. And forget the segments down river, as the pollutant would have dissipated by that point. They never explained why crabs and shrimp was disappearing.