What is the real unemployment rate?
The official unemployment rate currently stands at 14.7 percent, a number not seen since 1937. Economists believe it will go even higher next month, probably hitting or surpassing 20 percent. That’s a number associated with the Great Depression. But the real rate of unemployment is likely even higher. Unemployment is calculated by counting the percentage of the labor force that is without a job. But the definition of what it means to be in the labor force is very narrow. And economists are now saying that the real unemployment number is more likely around 23 percent. Dr. Jack Rasmus, a professor of economics at Saint Mary's College of California and author of “The Scourge of Neo-Liberalism: US Policy from Reagan to Trump,” which you can find at www.jackrasmus.com, joins the show.