Wow, dshields.
Ouch. A 14.5% rate of unemployment by the government's own statistical admission, if you add in if your underemployed (part time looking for full time) and other factors in the U-6 number. As someone who actually quit a terrific job to move in 2009 and was left with no alternative but to start my own business, and as the mother of a son who moved in with us until he could find part time work, Mish's stats ring true.
Wow, dshields.
Ouch. A 14.5% rate of unemployment by the government's own statistical admission, if you add in if your underemployed (part time looking for full time) and other factors in the U-6 number. As someone who actually quit a terrific job to move in 2009 and was left with no alternative but to start my own business, and as the mother of a son who moved in with us until he could find part time work, Mish's stats ring true.
You made an interesting point. We live in NJ. It is expensive here. We have the highest taxes in the country. Everything is expensive. The State has a serious spending problem. Chris Christie was elected to solve this and he is actually working on it. Bless him - unlike Corzine (the previous gov) he keeps his word.
The point you make about the kid is well taken. We have a 21 year of boy. He is going to college and living at home. All and I mean all of his 20 something friends live at home. He has friends that work full time and they do not make anywhere near enough money to live on their own. They make 8 to 12 dollars an hour and that is not enough for them to even team up by 2 and move out. You would need something like 4 of them to room together to be able to move out.
I graduated from high school in 1975 at 17 years old and went off to college out of state and never lived with my parents ever again except when I came to visit them. That is basically impossible now. I had friends who did not go to college. They got full time jobs and moved out. Everybody moved out of their parent's house into their own places and started on their lives one way or another. That is not happening around here. The few places there are to rent are expensive - and I mean expensive. Having a car and car insurance is really expensive. Our kid has a 2005 Dodge SRT4 - a 7 year old little 4 banger turbo car. On our insurance it is 190 a month. On his own policy with GEICO it would be 350 a month. There is no way a kid can pay 350 a month for car insurance. With a payment of 150 a month and 350 a month insurance you are talking 500 a month for a little car. When I was a kid car insurance was peanuts.
I see a pattern developing where kids are going to be living with their parents into their 30's in NJ. Even if you go to a college like NJIT (state school) and get a BS in engineering and then are lucky and actually get an engineering job you will owe something like 150,000 dollars in loans unless your parents are super rich and pay as you go. There are a lot of rich people around Sussex County NJ. When I drive by the high school the student parking lot has much nicer cars than the teachers parking lot. That must be depressing for the teachers.
I am not sure how it will all work out. My generation has not been able to elect responsible politicians. As a result the government is on an out of control spending spree. It does not look good. I fear we are going to give our children a pretty shitty America. Our parents gave us a pretty decent America. They did pretty good. We have failed our children. We have not acted responsibility. Our children are going to pay the price.
Safewrite
As you say, a little digging shows that unemployment is much worse than the headline numbers. The Federal Reserve publishes graphs using other data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that are revealing.
This one shows that twelve years ago, in the year 2000, the same number of people worked full time as today.
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?graph_id=74176&category_id=4782
Meanwhile our civilian population has grown about 25 million.
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?graph_id=74256&category_id=4784
Combing them to get a ratio, we find that in 1978 the same proportion of the population worked as today. But back then women were just starting to enter the work force in large numbers.
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?graph_id=74178&category_id=4782
It is no wonder that consumer confidence is now as low as during the depths of the crash in 2009.
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?graph_id=74190&category_id=4789
I’ve also seen multiple reports that around 50% of all people age 21-25 are living with their parents. No graph for that one. 
Travlin
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The non-farm payroll report today was not good...
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/05/payroll-disaster-nonf...