Stephen Roach on discouraged workers
Courtesy of Tim Iacono at The Mess That Greenspan Made
After last Friday’s print of 9.7 percent for the unemployment rate, more than a few pundits are calling the 10.1 percent jobless rate seen back in October the high for the cycle. It seems to be way too early to make that call based on the millions of "discouraged" workers who, when they start looking for work again, will suddenly count as "unemployed" again.
Stephen Roach seems to agree, figuring that the real jobless rate today is 11.5 percent.
The odds of a double-dip recession are now 40 percent? That’s good to know. There’s been a lot of talk about another downturn for the U.S. economy, but it comes as news to me that they’ve already taken the time to poll economists and that they were this pessimistic.
