True unemployment rate in USA already at 20%
Alternate Unemployment Measure rose to a jaw-dropping 20.6%. Separately, the Center for Labor Market Studies in Boston puts U.S. unemployment at 18.2%. Any way you cut the numbers, the situation is very bad. One-in-three among the unemployed have been looking for a job for more than six months and still can't find one.
This brings us to another issue: expiring unemployment benefits. Continuing unemployment claims fell 53,000 to 6.7 million last week.
How much of this decline is due people exhausting their standard 26-week benefit.
we could face a situation where people find that they have no job and no unemployment benefits. For these people, 2009 will feel an awful lot like 1932. As a result, spending cuts will be deep and dramatic.
http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/topstocks/archive/2009/07/06/true-unemployment-rate-already-at-20.aspx