Why do some people say that the real unemployment rate is over 20%?

If one challenges the official unemployment rate, they are almost always and immediately labeled a “conspiracy theorist”. This is weird because we all know that the U-3 unemployment rate doesn’t tell the whole story. So, logically, maybe the U-6 rate also isn’t very accurate either. Is that really so crazy? Not really. And you don’t have to think there’s some dark conspiracy to think that a data point isn’t a good data point.

By the way, calling someone a ‘conspiracy theorist’ to the exclusion of addressing their arguments is a textbook example of the ad hominem fallacy.

In the above graphic, you see long-term discouraged workers. They were defined out of existence decades ago. And it’s not even like long-term unemployed people are now very long-term. In other words, the U-6 rate only tracks people for 12 months. That’s not long-term. That’s more like short-term or medium-term. It also doesn’t seem to be a good definition of a discouraged worker. How discouraged are you if the length is only a dozen months? I’ve known people who were unemployed for longer than that. They didn’t get discouraged until after the 12 months the U-6 tracks.