Excellent work here. Does your calculation take into account the quirky way that the US counts unemployment? By that I mean that they only count active job seekers instead of those who have given up looking? I know that you discussed this in your October diary.

Also, the "excess" part of your formula is, I believe, a sound way to handle this. It demonstrates some unusual characteristics of the total US labor force that does skew the comparability.

Let's never forget that the eurozone created more jobs than the US over the last 10 years, as per the Economist (and that, despite lower population growth)

In fact, the job creation record of Bush is by far the worst ever.

the jobs to population ratio dropped massively

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Most of them will have been in civilian jobs (typically as I understand it, police or security such as prison staff - note the background of the Abu Grahib torturers) Has anybody does any analysis of whether employers replacing these NG with even temporary workers in fact represents the supposed jobs growth under Bush

Part of this is due to illegal (and legal) immigrants, but much of it is due to the desire of people to avoid paying various taxes. Home improvement and other services seem to be a frequent place for this to occur. Just from my own personal observation I've seen tree trimming, roofing, plumbing repair, lawn care and house cleaning all done recently "off the books". Even licensed businesses participate. A frequent example is a repair service will not charge local sales tax if the bill is paid in cash. This means that the customer saves about 8%, but the vendor hides the entire transaction saving up to 25%.

Another area is the rise in people running home businesses over Ebay. I've also seen instances of barter: work in a shop was paid for by getting merchandise in return. I don't know if there are any studies of this.

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

Why is there this fascination around here with re-defining the unemployment metrics? There are professional people who have spent their lives doing this in organizations that don't have an axe to grind, for example, the U.N.; why not just use their methods? And there are so many complicating factors that these "deconstructions" either overlook completely or skew one way or the other to make the target look bad. I get a really strong conspiracy-theorist feeling when I read these diaries; just the same sort of stuff as at the Roswell "UFO museum," for example: Lining up a whole bunch of data points to demonstrate one position, while ignoring a bunch of others that are inconvenient.

For example you want to count military personnel as unemployed. Ok, what about the military contractors that work alongside them doing essentially identical jobs? And what about the other government employees whose paychecks come from the same place? What about the employees of companies that sell their products to the government? Aren't they ALL "unemployed" by your measure?

And don't forget to include my neighbor who is technically unemployed, but who owns three houses and is rebuilding them with hopes of selling them for a profit. No personal corporation or published business phone number, just a guy with loans on three houses and a big account at the lumber yard. Is he unemployed? He sure works his butt off.

I bet if you worked at it you could figure out how to show that everybody in the country is unemployed.

The bottom line is that I just don't understand why it's so critically important to "prove"--by adjustment of metrics, or by any other method--that America has a high unemployment rate (and, conversely, that other countries don't). Is there no validity to the idea that the people who generate the standard statistics have spent much, much more time thinking about this than any of us bloggers, no matter how well-intentioned?

Sir, in your story of the 15th of June ''Real Swedish jobless rate 15%' you make reference  to a report by the McKinsey Global Institute that analyses the structure of joblessness in Sweden.

While I welcome any study or story that goes beyond the normal reduction of a complicated joblessness situation to a single number it is unfair to single out Sweden without pointing out that this approach would lead to a far higher joblessness measure in any country it was applied to. A quick estimate suggests that the US would have a "de-facto joblessness" rate of about 13%, France about 18% and Ireland about 11%.

To say that the numbers "cast a pall" on Sweden's reputation is entirely unfair. Better to say that it shows how well Sweden is doing by maintaining normal joblessness rates and excellent measures in almost every other metric.

The labour of some of the most respectable orders in the society is, like that of menial servants, unproductive of any value, and does not fix or realize itself in any permanent subject, or vendible commodity, which endures after that labour is past, and for which an equal quantity of labour could afterwards be procured. The sovereign, for example, with all the officers both of justice and war who serve under him, the whole army and navy, are unproductive labourers. They are the servants of the public, and are maintained by a part of the annual produce of the industry of other people. Their service, how honourable, how useful, or how necessary soever, produces nothing for which an equal quantity of service can afterwards be procured. The protection, security, and defence, of the commonwealth, the effect of their labour this year, will not purchase its protection, security, and defence, for the year to come. In the same class must be ranked, some both of the gravest and most important, and some of the most frivolous professions; churchmen, lawyers, physicians, men of letters of all kinds; players, buffoons, musicians, opera-singers, opera-dancers, etc. The labour of the meanest of these has a certain value, regulated by the very same principles which regulate that of every other sort of labour; and that of the noblest and most useful, produces nothing which could afterwards purchase or procure an equal quantity of labour. Like the declamation of the actor, the harangue of the orator, or the tune of the musician, the work of all of them perishes in the very instant of its production.

heading into Norway, Denmark, Germany are evidence of this. Leaving Sweden ...

to establish centers of social and cultural practices far from their beloved native soil in order to grasp the potentials of new opportunities for economic development.

Joyously singing their folksongs...

We come from the land of the ice and snow,
from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.
The hammer of the gods
Will drive our ships to new lands,
To fight the horde, singing and crying:
Valhalla, I am coming!

Madness takes its toll. Have exact change ready

As I read this debate, no one has yet challenged the notion of why one should need a large military, even if it is democratically decided to have such a thing.

Either it is, as Colman surmises, a fix for the unemployment figures, or it is, as I surmise, absofuckinglutely megolamaniac stupidity, unfit for the 3rd millennium.

How can you possibly compare a desire for a gargantuan frikkin military and an even more humungous intelligence industry with the desire for health treatment for all, a decent postal service or humane treatment for animals or anything else that a dignified society might wish to accomplish?

You can't be me, I'm taken