Officially, 1.1 million Californians are unemployed, half as many as the state had during the depths of the Great Recession.
However, a new analysis of employment data by the Legislature’s budget adviser suggests that when the underemployed and labor force dropouts are added to the official number, job distress affects nearly three times as many Californians.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office data come from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics and the state Department of Employment.
The official unemployment rate is the percentage of those in the labor force who are jobless, but the BLS has an additional measure, dubbed “U-6”, of “labor force underutilization.” It includes not only the unemployed, but “all marginally attached workers, plus the total employed part-time for economic reasons,” meaning involuntarily.
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