Once upon a time in America, grown men were expected to work a job, women were expected to stay home with the kids, and families were expected to cover expenses with their own earnings. There was no welfare state to step in for the unfortunate, or the feckless. This was the land for which the “unemployment rate” was invented.
The “unemployment rate” was a pretty good tool for measuring the problem of workless-ness in that long-forgotten America. But we don’t live in that country any more. Consequently, our old-fashioned “unemployment rate” has become an increasingly inaccurate barometer for measuring the health of the American labor market and the well-being of the American public.
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