US unemployment stats understate problem – research

Peterson Institute research says BLS figures fail to include all workers affected by pandemic

A queue of unemployed workers during the Great Depression

The US unemployment rate fell again in June, but, adjusting for classification errors, reveals a smaller drop than official figures suggest, argue economists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

The official unemployment rate was 11.1% in June, down from 13.3% in May and 14.7% in April.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) “continues to understate” the unemployment rate from a “historically comparable perspective”, say Jason Furman and Wilson Powell in a research note.

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