Millions are disappearing from the unemployment rolls as they stop job search
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There are 3.5 million people missing in the U.S.
Their families know them. Their neighbors see them come and go.
But 3.5 million people who should be in the labor force are no longer there -- and the government doesn't know what has become of them.
On the first Friday of each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the nation's monthly unemployment rate. The rate, which currently stands at 9.6 percent, is calculated by a telephone survey and is one of the barometers of the economy.
But the unemployment rate is understated because of the number of people who have just stopped looking for work.
"If all of those [3.5 million] people were in the workforce and unemployed, the unemployment rate would be 11.6 percent," said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. Even that's not exactly accurate. She said in actuality some of the people re-entering the labor force would garner jobs while others would create their own jobs.
The better number, she said, is contained in a Bureau of Labor Statistics report that pulls together three groups: unemployed workers (those who have looked for a job in the last month); discouraged workers; and people who are marginally attached to the labor force. If those people were all considered part of the labor force, the unemployment rate would be 11 percent.
The fuzzy picture of what the American workforce is up to is not just a national phenomena. People have gone missing from the workforce in the Pittsburgh region, too.
Local unemployment numbers released Tuesday by the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry showed that in the seven counties in the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area, 9,600 workers stepped out of the workforce between May and July.
Mark Price, a labor economist with the Keystone Research Center in Harrisburg, said if the size of Pennsylvania's labor force had kept up with the state's population growth, there would be 80,000 more people in the Pennsylvania job market.
While the Bureau of Labor Statistics knows how many people have left the labor force, it does not track the reasons. For that, there is only speculation.
First Published September 5, 2010 12:00 am
