In his Tuesday column, Paul Krugman made the following aside:
[H]ow weak is the labor market? The measured unemployment rate of 5.9 percent isn’t that high by historical standards, but there’s something funny about that number. An unusually large number of people have given up looking for work, so they are no longer counted as unemployed, and many of those who say they have jobs seem to be only marginally employed. Such measures as the length of time it takes laid-off workers to get new jobs continue to indicate the worst job market in 20 years. (emphasis added)
Krugman’s assertion here is that the number of discouraged workers (“those who have given up looking for work”) plus the number of part-time workers who wish they were full-time (“only marginally employed”) are unusually high by historical standards.
What do the numbers actually say? Donald Luskin has the percentage of discouraged workers over the past decade. The figure was much higher a decade ago than it is now.
Then there’s the percentage of Americans who are part-time workers but would prefer full-time employment. Again, the figures over the past ten years (from the comments section in this Brad DeLong post (you can generate the numbers for yourself here — click on U-5 and U-6, and substract the former from the latter) show that the 2003 numbers are not unusual at all — again, the figure was higher a decade ago.
Krugman is either wrong or has a different definition of “unusual” than the rest of the English-speaking world.
Distortions like this one could explain parodies like this one.
UPDATE: In a quasi-response, Brad DeLong has a plethora of posts about the current state of unemployment — and unemployment statistics (posted by Daniel Drezner).
The Dish 