86 million invisible unemployed??????

CNN last week came up with one big blunder. Annalyn Censky at CNN published a piece titled: “The 86 million invisible unemployed.” It does not take too much thought to realize this is an absurd number. With 86 million unemployed that would mean that over 25 percent of the entire population of the United States is currently unemployed.

Give me a break CNN. Do you really think you enhance your reputation and credibility with such statistics?

So what did they do. It did not take too long to figure out their math. They took every single person that is listed as currently not in the labor force and decided that they were in the “invisible unemployed.” That includes all the retire people who do not even want a job, it includes college students who would rather be studying for their future career than working in the labor force, it includes those who choose to stay home and raise their children and forge the money and hassles of holding a job, and includes those who just choose not to work.

If CNN does not like the current official definition of unemployment the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes several alternative measures that can be used in its place. None of those come close to the definition that CNN seems to like.