Juggling figures
It's interesting that all of a sudden "discouraged workers" are being plugged into the unemployment headlines for the first time that I can remember. Should we go back to previous unemployment figures and plug these numbers in for a fair comparison? For example, plugging discouraged worker numbers into the December, 2000 figure raises that historical low rate of 3.9 percent to 4.1. In some months, like January of 1994, the number of discouraged workers was so high (600,000) it would have raised the rate from 6.6 percent to 7.1 if factored in.