augmented unemployment
The graph below is pretty interesting. He is rolling several different kinds of unemployment into one graph but it does indicate something is going on. It seems to have taken off sharply at say Febuary 01 but one could also argue it took off at 9/11.
The trend carries right through the bubble bursting and the start of the recession.
Note that the actual unemployment rate is 9%. This is a more accurate measure of unemployment than new unemployment claims. Oh, it's as massaged as any other governmental statistical fiction; But at least its a measure of what the other fictions tries to hide: The hard number of unemployed workers.