Unemployment

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is now admitting to a U.S. unemployment rate of 9.7%. That's an increase of .1% per week in July, and we're not to the end of the month yet.

Go here for an interesting interactive graph that shows overall unemployment, and allows you to add the curve for your favorite state to the mix to see how you're doing compared to the national average, or anyone else.

I suppose if you want to feel better about your own personal situation, you could add Puerto Rico to your own states figure, or maybe Michigan. As long as that's not actually your state.

As described here, there are multiple ways to figure out the unemployment rate that depend on weather you count people whose unemployment has run out, and who may not be looking very hard for a job they're pretty sure isn't actually out there.

The U-6 rate is probably best estimated by figuring a multiplier of the U-3 since as the U-3 goes down, the marginally attached and discouraged will become fully attached and less discouraged.

Marginally attached workers are persons who currently are neither working nor
 looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and
 have looked for work sometime in the recent past.  Discouraged workers, a
subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for
 not looking currently for a job.

A quick and dirty SWAG at this makes the multiplier to be 1.736, which makes the U-6 to be 16.86%.

Before things can get better, perhaps the administration should listen to itself, and take some of its own advice. An article in the WSJ, quotes the president in a speech he made on his latest trip to Africa:

Here's some of what Mr. Obama said: "No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20% off the top."

While at the same time:

Similarly, while U.S. government officials don't usually demand bribes (at least outside of Illinois), the U.S. corporate tax rate, at 39%, is the second highest in the industrialized world. That's about 10 percentage points higher than the OECD average, or nearly twice the 20% "bribe tax" that scandalizes Mr. Obama.

Even the Chicago mob doesn't usually demand more than 20% from operators of small businesses and pushcarts.