Unemployment may be even worse than most think. The official rate at the end of last month was 6.9% or 10.7Million people. Back in Feb the rate was 3.5% and 5.7m. So the pandemic was/is severe..
The official unemployment rate is referred to as the U-3 rate. There is another one called U-6. It is a higher estimate of the hurt caused by unemployment. It includes people who are in part time jobs bc they can't find a full time job of 6.2 m people and those called marginally attached to the work force of 2.2 m. That gives you a rate of 11.6% when added to the U3 rate. You can see it gets somewhat high at this point. And it still does not include other discouraged people who have left the work force.
This past month the survey added 15.8m people who may or may not have been paid. They worked for companies that were closed by employers due to covd. They are not included in the unemployment stats.
Add it up and you start to see that very many of our people need help paying their bills and to avoid starvation. Oh hell just look at the lines of people out there on food lines. So when the conservative heros out there start talking about " liberal" give aways tell them some of us want to help. I mean if you can give well over a trillion EACH year for recurring tax cuts to the rich, can we do a little for those hurting and hungry and about to be or have been evicted? It was not their fault and some might suggest our government did almost nothing and can't even manage the vaccine, sort of like a Hoover.
