Unemployment in the United States and Reporting

According to Bureau of Labor department, our national unemployment rate has hit 6.7% of our total labor force; however, that doesn't count the unemployed who want to work but have given up looking. According to The Economist magazine the real rate is 12.5%. The official count of unemployed is 10.3 million workers per the Labor department, so 12.5% is really 19.3 million out of work.

Another figure of the Labor department is 80.2 million not in the work force, but the population of the United States is over 305 million people. Granted some are children or retired but since 70 million people are not accounted for over an above the 80.2 million, I wonder how many are not working who don't want to work. As I recall the part timers are counted in the employment figures.

I just wish the newspapers and the media would spend more time reporting things that effect our economy than 80% of the stuff that they do print. Newspapers can't compete with the Internet, Television, and our cell phones so they should spend time doing investigative reporting that could do the search most of us don't have the time to do.


Joe