US unemployment rate at six -year low

I sincerely doubt that these numbers include all of the people who are working minimum wage part-time jobs who would like to have a full-time job either. My husband has been looking for full-time employment since September and it is still non-exisistent around here. He has had one interview and they wanted full availability (which he can't do because of school) and it was only for 20 hours per week.

 

A lot of people have also moved toward working fir themselves because they could not find outside jobs. Is self employment counted in these stats?

 

I would not put a whole lot of faith in the unemployment stats these days. It does not even begin to touch that iceberg that is American unemployment. It is true, many people are under employed, working two jobs that they are probably over qualified for. The other thing is seasonal work puts a huge whammy on the figure. I know they SAY they adjust to allocate for that, but I often wonder about that. We got these forms at work once that wanted us to list our season help and the status, the form was vague so we called and were told to count each employee as one. Whether they worked 5 hours or 35 hours. Traditionally part time employees are counted as a half, not one. Talk about skewing the data, i am sure this will come back to bite many payroll departments.

 

I agree we can't use simplistic statistics to judge the quality of life of individuals. The price of living in some parts of America do not match the wages so there are a lot of people that are left as wage slaves with little to no savings.

 

These statistic are all biased, sometimes we just take a course and we no longer join the unemployed statistics, does this make any sense?

 

I am pretty sure that people who are self-employed are not counted, at least not those like me who do a little of this and a little of that to try and make ends meet. That is pretty messed up about the seasonal employees too, although I am not even a little bit surprised to hear it.

 

I wonder what that number is going to look like after the holidays are over? The city of Seattle just implemented a $15 dollar an hour minimum wage and my prediction is that there are going to be quite a few people after work as soon as the law takes effect because most companies can't afford to pay people that much money and still make a profit. It will be interesting to see how this all pans out.

 

I see a trend of americans being hired as "independant consultants" or freelancers to get around bearocracy. I really hope the US government doesn't expand its reach to the internet to screw over internet entrepreneurs as well (that could affect me as well ).