Using the statistical method of the U.S. Government of the late 1970s and earlier that showed that there was 25% unemployment at the nadir of the Great Depression, and mid-teens in the early 1980s recession, the current unemployment rate is 16.5%.
Even during the “good economy” of the late 1990s and through most of 2000, which was credited to then-President Bill Clinton, (though strangely the Republican Congress doesn’t get any), the unemployment rate was only as low as 10.5%.
If you have read this medium for any extended length of time, then you know that I take the current unemployment methodology with a grain of salt. If you get laid off and haven’t found work in a certain amount of time, the beancounters drop you off the face of the Earth. Also, it only takes working an hour a week at minimum wage to be considered “employed.”
[...] If they’re trying to win me with the bit about unemployment stats, they might as well give up. Lew Rockwell recently blew that fish out of the water. [...]