The trouble with talking about unemployment

Something weird is happening in the unemployment statistics. Weird in an unhelpful way. The unemployment rate used to tell us more than just the percentage of people looking for a job. For a long time, you could also rely on it to tell you a consistent story about underemployment — people who do have a job but want more hours. The relationship used to be simple. Underemployment was a couple of points higher than unemployment. That seems to have suddenly changed, and it sends a frightening message about the economy. For the last decade, it hovered around two percent. Now it has shot up to a record high of 2.6 percent and stayed there. This matters because a lot of people use the unemployment rate as a measure of what is happening in the labour market. We need to focus on more than the unemployment rate. And we should be sceptical of anyone who says a falling unemployment rate means things are going well. Economist, Jason Murphy, tells the full story here: (VIEW LINK)