Catherwood LibraryILR School

Although U.S. unemployment rates have been in a state of flux in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, economists were surprised by the release last week of Labor Department data showing that from a six-year high in April of six percent, the unemployment fell to 5.7 percent in August. Expecting joblessness to have increased to 6.5 percent in that time period, some economists have pointed out that the seemingly positive movement is due more to their failure to take into account unemployed workers? increasing loss of hope in their ability to find a job. Despite longstanding questions of misrepresentation, calculations of U.S. unemployment rates continue to exclude from the ranks of those considered unemployed, workers who have given up looking for a job---a group which over the past few months has grown at the fastest pace since the mid-1970?s and accounts for the lower than expected unemployment rates.