"...The last time unemployment was at 7.8% occurred in January 2009, the month Obama took office.
But the three-tenths of a percentage point decline in joblessness was not an unalloyed triumph. The BLS tracks six different measures of "labor underutilization," of which the official unemployment rate, called "U-3," is but one measure. Normally, the trend in the other five measures adds very little information that isn't already observable in U-3.
This month was an exception. Another measure, U-6, includes everything in U-3 and then some; and it held firm at 14.7%. That's because this broader measure of labor underutilization includes people who work part-time but would prefer full-time jobs. The number of these involuntary part-timers jumped by 582,000 in September, about offsetting the decline in U-3.
For a broader perspective, take the ratio between U-6 and U-3 since the BLS began tracking U-6 in January 1994. Over this period, the ratio of U-6 to U-3 has averaged 1.76-to-1 and has generally been lower than 1.80-to-1. In September 2012, it ran 1.88-to-1, the highest on record.
So let's hope that ratio narrows in coming months, with U-3 at least holding at 7.8% and U-6 declining, as the involuntary part-timers begin to find the full-time jobs they seek. Otherwise, the 7.8% unemployment rate deserves a huge asterisk.
No great shakes was the addition to nonfarm-payroll employment of 114,000 in September, with government adding 10,000 and the private sector 104,000. With revisions to July and August, the total net addition came to 200,000, but all those upward revisions were from government."
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