From the article:
There are many reasons to distrust the unemployment figures. The most obvious is that those who give up looking for work no longer count among the official "unemployment." (Extraordinary, but true.)
But we know Ben Bernanke looks at the raw data.
What is he seeing?
Take a look at a chart I produce from time to time. It is drawn directly from the government's own reports. But instead of relying on their headline numbers, or various other bits of spin or presentation, I go to the raw data itself.
The chart focuses on just one simple number: The percentage of adult men, age between 25 and 54, who are in full-time work.
Let's call it "the Guy Rate."
It's not a perfect measure of the jobs market, but it's a key one and it cuts out a lot of noise. It ignores most kids in grad school, early retirees, and new mothers who choose to stay at home. It counts as unemployed a former $80,000 a year machinist who has given up looking for work. It also counts the one who is still stuck working one night shift a week at his local Shell station.
It focuses only on men of prime working age, it counts all of them, and then deducts only those who are in full-time work.
As you can see -- and as Ben Bernanke surely sees -- the picture remains grim. Just 75% of these guys are in full-time work -- or, to put it another way, one in four men of prime working age in America lacks a full-time job.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/what-does ... know-.html