“At this point, the labor market is worse than people realize because people are discouraged. Certainly, a large number of workers have given up on the job market.”-Keith Hall, former commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Believe it or not the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics actually attempts to track those people who’re unofficially unemployed.

The “official” unemployment numbers count those who’ve been looking for work for the last four weeks, and people who already have jobs but are looking for better work.  The fact that “official” unemployment numbers includes people that are actually employed should be enough for you to doubt them.

But it turns out the Bureau of Labor Statistics does try to count people who’ve been out of work longer than four weeks, or who have just stopped looking for work, they just don’t include those people in the “official” unemployment reports.

One way they look at it is what they call labor force participation.  According to their latest numbers, the labor force participation rate in the United States is at it’s lowest level since 1984. There are 86 million U.S. citizens who gave up looking for work!  That’s 86 million “unofficially” employed on top of the 12.7 million “officially” unemployed!

That means there’s actually 98.7 million people known by the federal government to be unemployed in the United States!

Department of Labor officials say that at least 6 million unofficially unemployed have stopped looking for work because most jobs available are not worth taking (from the unemployed’s point of view).

Labor officials also admitted that they didn’t know why about 36 million of the unofficially unemployed refuse to look for work.  In fact the labor force participation rate has been steadily dropping since 2000, years before the credit crisis began!

To make matters worse, the Chicago Federal Reserve bank expects labor force participation rate to continue to fall.

Why is the Labor Department coming forth with this dismal unemployment announcement?  Because federal government officials and politicians have realized that with nearly 100 million people out of work, and signs that it’s going to get worse, the money the federal government steals through income taxes will continue to be less and less (don’t be surprised when they start jackin’ up taxes on those who are employed).