Screw Job

State unemployment figures are out from the Labor Department for February. They are pretty grim. Seven states are now into double digit unemployment:

• Michigan, 12.0%
• South Carolina, 11.0%
• Oregon, 10.8%
• North Carolina, 10.7%
• California, 10.5%
• Rhode Island, 10.5%
• Nevada, 10.1%

DC is on the edge with 9.9% and seven more states are between 9 and 10%. Seven more states are between 8 and 9%. If the national U-3 average goes up to 10%, there's a very good chance that you'll be looking at twenty-one states plus DC in double digit unemployment.

U-6 numbers for all those states? Since these seven states range from 2% to 3.9% over the national U-3 average of 8.1%, and the U-6 is 14.8% (and you add 60% to the previous spread to reflect the current 60% increase in the difference between U-3 and U-6 over the last 12 months) that means the U-6 numbers are estimated for these states to be between 3.2% and 6.3% higher than the national 14.8% U-6 average, by this method.

That's putting the U-6 range estimation for these states being 18.0% for Nevada on the low end (14.8% + 3.2%) and a staggering 21.1% for Michigan on the high end (14.8% + 6.3%).

That's frightening. Michigan would be the only 20% plus U-6 state in my estimation right now, but SC would be close at 19.5% (14.8+ 4.7%). It will not take long at all for Michigan to hit 25% on the U-6.

Not long at all. Now, these are just back-of-the-napkin numbers, but remember, 25% U-6 is Depression era level "real" unemployment. Michigan is almost there now.