On 2012-01-10, at 12:52 PM, // ravi wrote:
> My doubt is not so much about where to draw the line but what I catch with that line i.e., is this a significant statistic to gather?
Discouraged workers are another indicator, perhaps the deepest one, of the distress caused by the lack of available jobs. The headline unemployment number in the US excludes them and others who are underemployed or only marginally employed as part-time, term and casual workers. But all are typically having trouble making ends meet and in need of regular full-time employment. While official unemployment is at 8.5%, the U6 rate which captures the wider universe has hovered around 17% since the financial crisis. There are approximately one million discouraged workers who have stopped looking for work, representing about 0.5% of the labour force, which may be relatively insignificant as a percentage of the whole, but not in the context of drawing attention to the full magnitude of the problem. Among those counted, there will be some who are not strictly speaking discouraged workers, but I doubt they would distort the U6 rate in any meaningful way.