Hacker News Reader

Although, unexpectedly this is not due to a growth in the number of discouraged workers. It's not clear where they went. See http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/09/why-did-labor-...

View on HN

If you count the long-term unemployed, the number of discouraged workers has grown. U6, which only counts those who are discouraged and have been unemployed less than a year, hasn't risen, but other unofficial counts that include those unemployed for more than a year has.

In fact, by some unofficial counts, like this one http://www.opednews.com/articles/Real-Unemployment-at-23--by... , total unemployment may be as high as 23% right now. Nor is this the only one, this sight is pretty lefty, two recent essays on the conservative site VDare.com have given similar estimates (22%) for current total unemployment.

I think that number is very reasonable. Zerohedge.com is very libertarian and they also use the 23% number provided by shadowstats.

hm. I would think that a large number of boomers are starting to retire. My parents all retired in the last few years, and one of them got an 'early retirement package' to leave slightly earlier than she otherwise would have been able to.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com