Jobs situation worse than unemployment rate.

While most of the news on unemployment focuses on the unemployment rate, I’ve always found it easier to look at total civilian employment numbers in total and as a percent of the population when looking at the situation. The chart below was created using historical data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau. Here’s what jumped out at me.

• Total civilian employment today is at the same level as in 1995. We’ve lost 15 years of private sector job creation.
• Civilian employment as a percent of the total population is at the same level as 1975.
• The loss in civilian jobs as a percent of the total population parallels the job loss of the great depression.

Coupled with those changes, women for the first time in history have constituted the majority of the work force.

The other question that always comes up in any unemployment discussion is “what’s the real unemployment rate?” I have heard or read estimates ranging from the low teens to the low twenties.  Here is mine. First, just to make things easy, I exclude everyone under 18 and over 65 from the job pool. Combined, they are 37.1% of the population. Government employment at all levels is 7.8% of the population. Add them up and they leave 55.1% of the population that is employable. Currently, 40.3% of the population is employed, so the real unemployment is 14.8%.

Given the numbers, the reported 9.6% rate hardly reflects the real picture.

Civil Employment 1929-2010