The official unemployment rate hides a lot.
By one important measure, this recession is every bit as bad as it gets. Lee Price, chief economist of the Senate Budget Office, finds that the number of people working as a proportion of the working-age population has fallen faster in this recession than the average of the last nine recessions. Moreover, it has fallen for 27 months, longer than in any other postwar recession.
The first priority of a stimulus package should be to extend unemployment benefits beyond the customary period. Unless the economy improves, two million workers will run out their unemployment insurance by the end of the year, and an additional couple of hundred thousand will lose coverage every month thereafter.
