Unemployment Is Worse Than Assumed

Every time a new jobs report shows that the labor situation in the U.S. has improved, some economists ask that people look beyond the single number the press uses. Many people are underemployed. Some people have dropped out of the workforce. Ben Bernanke tells Congress not to be misled. Unemployment is still a problem. But the numbers seem to be cause for improved sentiment anyway. Even the president gets credit for the positive trend, based on poll numbers.

More disturbing than the figure that politicians, the media and economists debate are the ones that show joblessness by state and city. In some geographic areas, more than one person in five is still out of work. The improvement in those numbers does not match the overall national improvement. The jobs problem is more local than it is national.

A new set of data from Gallup shows that unemployment was 21% or higher in 2011 in five states: California, Florida, Nevada, Mississippi and Michigan. Five states does not seem like many. It just so happens, though, that the total population of these states is just over 70 million. Some 23% of all Americans are among their residents. And figures are not much better in several other states.

No federal program address joblessness in the regions that have been hardest hit by the recession. Most of the states with the greatest trouble do not have the money to help. As a matter of fact, states including Michigan and California have their own budget problems, as do many of their cities.

Whatever the national unemployment numbers show, underemployment and people who drop out of the job market are not as acute a problem as they are in California, Florida, Nevada, Mississippi and Michigan.

Methodology: Results are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking January to December, 2011, with a random sample of 214,822 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

Douglas A. McIntyre