Ramesh and King Banaian dispute yesterday’s post on whether the “real” unemployment figure is higher than 10 percent and might be even as high as 22 percent.

Perhaps I’m extrapolating from personal anecdotes too much; I know two folks who want to work, looked for work through much of 2008, and have largely stopped actively looking for work because there simply aren’t any prospects in their field in their area (and yes, relocation, branching into different fields, and the usual moves are not realistic options). I think these folks ought to be counted as unemployed, since they want a job and can’t find one; the idea that not sending out a résumé for an extended period of time suddenly makes you “not unemployed” in the government’s eyes is one that I have a hard time getting my head around.

In the example Ramesh cites,

even that small number of discouraged workers is not simply those who could not find work, but those who simply “think” no work is available, or think they are too young, too old, or that they lack the necessary schooling or training.

Yeah, but at the end of the day, they’re still not going to a workplace, doing any work, or collecting a paycheck. Sure, an engineer could become a short-order cook or a software programmer could become a Starbucks barista; there indeed may be jobs out there that they’re not taking. But in the end, you still have unemployed engineers and software programmers.

(Banaian cites an anecdote of a junior engineer who “plans to take their severance, then apply for unemployment and planned to mostly use it up before looking for another job.” I don’t doubt this “funemployment!” phenomenon happens, but I have a tough time believing those circumstances are common enough to affect the statistics. Again, maybe I’m extrapolating too much from the situations of those I know.)

Even when the economy starts creating jobs in bunches, you’re going to see the unemployment rate stay steady or perhaps even increase as these folks who dropped out of the labor force jump back in. The size of the U.S. civilian labor force in the third quarter of 2009 was 154,235,000; in the December figures it is 153,059,000. That’s 1,176,000 people who stopped counting towards the unemployment figure. Right now, the Obama administration’s economic management is getting graded on a curve, because hundreds of thousands of frustrated out-of-work citizens are treated as nonentities under our usual statistics.

As for those working part-time for economic reasons, I concur that they’re not “unemployed.” But they sure as heck are an indicator of an unhealthy economy. (I’m not even going to get into businesses that give full time, 40-hour-a-week employees various benefits but don’t offer them to those who work 35 hours. Seven hours a day five days a week is stretching the definition of “part time.”)

Because we live in an era where the Jon Corzines and Barack Obamas of the world tout any minute improvement in the numbers as a reason to start playing “Happy Days Are Here Again,” it’s worthwhile to spotlight the ways the statistics obscure folks living a much less satisfying life because of a sluggish economy.