Re-inflating the Crisis Bubble

I know the Great Recession/Little Depression has seen a lot of job destruction, but a Sacramento-based liberal think tank (is there any other kind) has made a shocking claim about the scope of CA's unemployment: Study: 2 Out of 5 Working Age Californians Are Jobless

A report released Sunday says two of five working-age Californians do not have a job, underscoring the challenges in one of the toughest job markets in decades. A new study has found that the last time employment levels among this group were this low was February 1977.

The study was done by the California Budget Project, a Sacramento-based nonprofit research group that advocates for lower- and middle-income families. The report said that California now has about the same number of jobs as it did nine years ago, when the state was home to 3.3 million fewer working-age people.

Pardon me, but doesn't "2 Out of 5" = 40%? That seems like an awfully high number, and "2 out of 5" seems like an especially odd bit of locution to express that.

Then again, I am not sure how seriously we should take a number like that. To get to a number like 40% "jobless," they must be counting stay-at-home moms, full time students, the disabled, the insane, the early-retired, and people on welfare; in other words, people who might be "working age" and "jobless" but who are also not going to go out looking for work any time soon.

I am not saying that there aren't a lot of people out there hurting. The Central Valley is experiencing a man-made depression as a result of water cut-offs. The construction, finance and real estate industries have also contracted mightily. Walk through downtown SF on a summer weekend, and you will see that tourism and retail shopping are both down considerably this year. But, 40% jobless? That's ridiculous.