Real U.S. unemployment is 16.6%

Here is an interesting article about how the federal government calculates the unemployment rate.  The official percentage does not include people who have not looked for work over the past 4 weeks.  It also does not count people working part time who want full time work.  This means that the official unemployment rate can go down when people who were looking for jobs have become discouraged and have stopped looking for awhile.  This is why new jobless claims can go up, but the official unemployment rate goes down.  In 1995, economists lobbied the government to change how it calculates unemployment, using the method that Japan, Canada, and Western Europe uses.  This new measurement is called "U-6" and is a better real world estimate of true unemployment.  The current estimate is 16.6%.