The author is absolutely right - we knew this was coming. Another item he might have mentioned to bolster his claim is that there are other unemployment related statistics that are more meaningful than this one, commonly referred to as the "headline" number.
In fact, I googled as I was writing this post and found he addressed this 6 months ago, and made exactly the same case I'm about to make- the U3 number that is the "headline" number should be ignored, and we should focus attention on the U6 number. (http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/06/unemployment-reporting-...)
A quick synopsis of the U6 measurement from his post: "U6, on the other hand, is the broadest measure of Unemployment: It includes those people counted by U3, plus marginally attached workers (not looking, but want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past), as well as Persons employed part time for economic reasons (they want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule)."
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And to be the contrarian:
The NFP is Meaningless
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/01/counter-intuitive-nfp/
The author is absolutely right - we knew this was coming. Another item he might have mentioned to bolster his claim is that there are other unemployment related statistics that are more meaningful than this one, commonly referred to as the "headline" number.
In fact, I googled as I was writing this post and found he addressed this 6 months ago, and made exactly the same case I'm about to make- the U3 number that is the "headline" number should be ignored, and we should focus attention on the U6 number. (http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/06/unemployment-reporting-...)
A quick synopsis of the U6 measurement from his post: "U6, on the other hand, is the broadest measure of Unemployment: It includes those people counted by U3, plus marginally attached workers (not looking, but want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past), as well as Persons employed part time for economic reasons (they want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule)."
He also links to a nice chart: http://bigpicture.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/06/0...
Just a minor nit: if a marginally attached worker looked for work, he would be unemployed.
"Unemployed" == "Not working but looking for work."
"Marginally attached" == "kinda wants a job, but not enough to actually look for one."