What This Means

This graph, from The Big Picture, means some combination of the following items:

1. The economy of the past 18 years has sucked so badly that people have increasingly given up looking up.


2. The basic unemployment number has been screwed with by administrations on both sides of the aisle, and significantly understates the unemployment rate.


3. That the economy has shifted significantly in the past 2 decades, and high levels of long term unemployment are the norm.

My money is mostly on number 2, though reverse Robin Hood is part of it.

Short term solution is more aid to the long term unemployed. The long term solution is fixing the BLS data, and creating a more just society.

Truth be told, I'm surprised that the divergence did not occur around 1983, when Reagan and His Evil Minions^™ screwed with the unemployment numbers with things like counting active duty military as a part of the workforce, to keep the unemployment number below 10.

Check out Daniel Gross in Slate, who argues that the normal unemployment numbers are complete crap.