> Can you direct me to any resources to figure out the
> truth of NYC unemployment? Or has anyone done his or
> her own analysis that may be helpful for me?
>
> I know that discouraged workers and the underemployed
> are not considered in the official figures as well. If
> anyone has good estimates on those numbers, i would be
> very grateful for your help...
The concept of discouraged worker is really important but unfortunately it is a pretty subjective thing for most people and it is difficult to capture in surveys (most importantly, its not in a regular survey that you could make observations over time). Both left and right have framed questions/defined responses to make the number appear high or low.
There are official statistics on "discouraged workers". The BLS's Current Population Survey has a recode of their extensive employment question that identifies "discouraged worker." It is just most people are not happy with the results (I just ran the numbers for the NYC PMSA--5 boroughs plus 3 other counties--out of Mar2004 CPS and the CPS would only estimate 100,000 discouraged workers in the 10 million people). You could create your own estimate out of the responses people give to the questions about why they are unemployed. The problem is that the sample is meant to be representative at the state level not at the city or PMSA or even CMSA level.
Also, because unemployment rates in the population as a whole are small (many are employed and most of the others are not in the labor force for other reasons) in order to really understand "discouraged workers" statistically you would have to oversample the unemployed and I do not think that is done very often.
Underemployment is also important but even more prone to definitional problems and how the question is framed to the one being surveyed.
I think whatever number you find or use the story of the discouraged worker (which anyone living amongst "real people" can relate to) is probably more important than the actual number (and I am usually very empirical).
Jim