More than 105 million working age Americans do not have a job right now

10:43 29.07.2023 •

Jobless people are classified into one of two categories by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) — either unemployed or not in the labor force. To be classified as unemployed in the month they are surveyed, people must be actively looking for work. If they are not actively looking, they are classified as not in the labor force. Over time, the definition of “officially unemployed” has gotten more restrictive, and today only 6.097 million working age Americans are considered to be in that category.

Meanwhile, a staggering 99.800 million working age Americans are considered to be “not in the labor force”!

When you add both categories together, you get a total of 105.897 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now, writes an author of independent USA resource ‘SGT Report’.

During the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, that number never even got up to 90 million. So that means that the number of working age Americans that are not employed at this moment far surpasses anything that we witnessed during the Great Recession.

Unemployment is not low. In fact, John Williams estimates that the real rate of unemployment in this country is somewhere around 25 percent.

Due to the lack of work, millions of people get into credit debts.

America’s credit card balance has passed $1 trillion, or it’s about to, depending on whom you ask, recognizes ‘The Hill’

The average interest rate on a new card is 24 percent, the highest figure since the Reaganomics era.

A typical American household now carries $10,000 in credit card debt, by one estimate, another record.

If that doesn’t sound like a lot of debt, try paying it off. At $250 per month, with 24 percent interest, you’ll be making payments until 2030, and you’ll spend a total of $20,318, twice what you owed. And that assumes you never use the card again.

The nation’s credit card debt stands at $986 billion, according to the Federal Reserve. The figure has climbed by $250 billion in two years.

Some other estimates range higher. A WalletHub report put total card debt at $1.2 trillion at the end of 2022.

 

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