Unemployment

CBS news is reporting that unemployment in Detroit is 10.3%, which makes Yuma AZ (31.8%) look bad by comparison. Anybody believe the unemployment rate in Detroit is really 10%? Detroit used to have about 2M people in it and an unemployment rate around 3%. That was then. By now some 1.2M people have given up looking for work there and moved out. Had they stayed, the unemployment rate would be 60% on top of the current listed 10% rate for an aggregate rate of 70%.  The only thing that keeps the rate down is the rate at which people flee the city and are no longer counted.

Much like the way that people leave the workforce in despair and are no longer counted in the national unemployment rate. Counting discouraged workers and adjusting for the national workforce decline, the national U.S. unemployment would be somewhere between 15-20% ,on a par with the Eurozone.

Yuma, BTW seems to consist of 45% retired snowbirds, 45% itinerant fruit pickers, and 10% actual people with jobs and businesses.  At least that's what it looked like when I went to visit my snowbird father there.