[p2p-research] Fwd: More on the Supply and Demand Curve

[Kevin Carson]

On 7/2/09, Paul D. Fernhout <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:

>  Still, in the USA, some people say we are now at 15% to 20% unemployment by
> 1970s standards. With no end in sight for rising unemployment. The economy
> may come back, but maybe not the jobs, as a "jobless recovery".

>  By older standards of unemployment (like from the 1970s), the USA is now at
> 15% to 20% unemployment:
> http://minnesotabudgetbites.org/2009/05/29/u-s-unemployment-at-16-according-to-wider-measure/
>  "The U-6 unemployment measure counts the unemployed, underemployed and
> marginally attached workers. This more comprehensive measure puts national
> unemployment at 15.8% – significantly higher than the official unemployment
> rate."

Like you, I found comparisons of U-6 unemployment to Great Depression
levels compelling.  But on further investigation, I found there was
less to it than meets the eye.  The 25% peak for the GD, in fact,
refers to something like current U-3 measures; by U-6 measures, GD
unemployment peaked at around 35-40%.

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/u3-and-u6-unemployment-during-great-depression

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html