U-7 Unemployment Rate is 16.2% --- Millions Not Counted

Millions of "discouraged workers" aren't counted by the government in the unemployment rate (these are the people who gave up looking for imaginary jobs.) According to PBS: Using the "U-7 rate" the unemployment rate is about 16.18 percent:

"Our U-7 index includes everyone in the government's U-3: everyone who said they wanted a job and had looked for one in the past four weeks. It also adds everyone who said they wanted one, hadn't looked in the past four weeks, but had in the past year. (These people are included in the government's most inclusive statistic, U-6). But we also add people who hadn't looked in the past year but still said they wanted a job and would take one. Finally, we add people working part-time, but say they are looking for full-time work."

Dollars and Sense (John Miller teaches economics at Wheaton College and is a member of the Dollars & Sense collective): "The BLS began calculating the U-7 rate in 1976 but discontinued it in 1994 in favor of the U-6 rate. In the 1982 recession the U-7 reached 15.3%, its highest level [as of 2009]. In fact, no bout of unemployment since the last year of the Great Depression in 1941 would have produced an adjusted unemployment rate as high as today’s." Massive changes of 1982 definitions of U-1 through U-7 were made in 1994 by the BLS.

Conservable Economist: In August 2013 the Current Population Survey asked those who are not in the labor force, and are not counted in the unemployment rate (because they were discouraged workers and were no longer looking for work), if they would like a job. About 6.3 million answered "yes."

Huffington Post: "Economist Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute recently estimated that there could be 4.4 million people in this group -- the bulk of the decline in the labor force."

One blogger calculates: "The unemployment numbers are missing 7,035,000 people" --- while Wiki has the number at 7 million for 99ers). 

Consider this:

• The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported 8.7 million job losses between the start of the recession in December of 2007 and June of 2009 when the recession "officially" ended.
• And that figure also jives with 8.1 million who were classified as "job losers" as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• There have also been about 3 million students graduating from high school every single year for 5 years since the Great Recession ended (not counting college graduates) (LINK) --- so how many jobs were created during that same time?