State Of Disaster

The June state unemployment figures are out, and they're pretty damned scary. Michigan's unemployment rose to 15.2% in June. If we're going by that same roughly six point above the national average, that would put Michigan's U-6 at 22.5%, which is a hideous number. It's probably closer to 25% at this point...one in five Michiganders, possibly as high as one in four, are unemployed, underemployed, or just out of the job market, and that's terrible, terrible news.

Four other states are above 12%, nine more and D.C. are above 10%, putting the U-6 numbers roughly somewhere from 17.5 to 20% for a healthy chunk of the country. Not good when that many people are out of a job.

It'll get worse, of course. We've got a lot of work to do, and the states need to stop screwing around on approving stimulus projects.