Unemployment Rate Down

Down from 8.5% to 8.3%  — a 0.2% drop last month.

But, here we go again with this nonsense about broader measures from CNBC:

The so-called real unemployment rate, which measures discouraged workers as well and is referred to as the U-6, nudged lower to 15.1 percent.

This measure isn’t “real” in the sense that we use the adjective real in other areas of macroeconomics.

Nor is the standard unemployment rate somehow now “unreal” or nominal.

The measure U-6 is just broader, and as discussed in the reading posted in the class folder on the G drive, and highly correlated (and therefore not adding much we don’t already know) to the standard unemployment rate.