Forrester is out of work and has no income. But he wouldn’t be counted as “unemployed” by the Labor Department because he’s not “actively looking for work.”
He had a job lined up with the Census Bureau, but it’s been put on hold.
“There’s really not a lot of jobs out there available right now. That’s what I’ve been doing — just basically cooling my heels,” Forrester said.
So what’s a better measure of unemployment? Bill Rodgers, a former chief economist at the Labor Department who currently teaches at Rutgers University, suggests the “labor force participation rate.”
“It’s the share of the civilian [noninstitutional] population that is either working, or they say that they’re actually searching for a job,” Rodgers explained.