That’s a plea from an X post a year ago. He presented various calculations (which are hard to replicate, because he does funny things like mixing CES numbers and CPS numbers), but indeed BLS calculates such a series: the U6 unemployment rate, which contrary to his assertion, economists are aware of. I will follow up on citing this series, even if Dr. Antoni has not in the past eight months.
Figure 1: Total Unemployed, Plus All Persons Marginally Attached to the Labor Force, Plus Total Employed Part Time for Economic Reasons, as a Percent of the Civilian Labor Force Plus All Persons Marginally Attached to the Labor Force (U-6), % s.a. (tan). Source: BLS via FRED.
I do not believe Dr. Antoni has mentioned this alternative series in the past eight months.
For context, here’re U6 vs U3 (“official”) unemployment rates.
Figure 2: Total Unemployed, Plus All Persons Marginally Attached to the Labor Force, Plus Total Employed Part Time for Economic Reasons, as a Percent of the Civilian Labor Force Plus All Persons Marginally Attached to the Labor Force (U-6), (tan), unemployment rate (U-3), both in %, s.a. Source: BLS via FRED.
Maybe Dr. Antoni has eschewed focusing on this series because U6 has risen 0.3 (0.6) ppts while U3 has risen only 0.1 (0.3) bps over the past year (since January 2025).
Here’s U6 minus U3:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1MsXz
We have data for 4 business cycles. The most obvious feature of this comparison between narrow and broad jobless rates is that the gap widens quickly during recessions and narrows gradually during expansions. In the case of the housing boom and bust, the gap was obviously widening in the final quarters of the expansion. The causes of the housing bust were largely internal to the economy.
On the way into the Covid recession, the gap was at its narrowest point for the expansion just before recession arrived – understandable, given the cause of the ultimate recession was mostly external to the operation of the economy.
The same was more or less true for the recession in 2000; the narrowest gap was just a few months s prior to recession. So were 9/11 and Y2K. We can argue over whether Y2K was external to the economy, though it certainly helped inflate the tech bubble.
So here we are, with the gap having widened more than it did prior to any of those other three recessions. This pretty strongly suggests that those marginally attached to the labor market are having a tough time. That’s consistent with spending patterns, and also means that the jobless claims data may be less helpful in tracking the health of the labor market – and the economy – than in the past. If my guess about internal vs external causes is right, it also means we have problems internal to the economy. Wonder what those could be?
Noise in the U6-U3 series obscures the turning point, but it was pretty clearly sometime around the end of 2023, or before – more reason for Biden’s “vibe” problem.
I’m not surprised that Antoni claimed a data series which the rest of us have long known about doesn’t exist. The available explanations for such a claim are ignorance and dishonesty, both of which little Antoni displays in abundance.
You can always count on little EJ to misrepresent
Little EJ3 has even absent from Twitter for almost 6 weeks. Guess all those comments rebutting his trash got to him
They are busy scrubbing his record before his Senate confirmation hearing. The order is out: “Don’t say anymore stupid stuff.”
The felon-in-chief has long used lies as a political tool, and many of those lies have been easy to falsify because the felon lied about actual data. Now that the felon is once again in charge of the federal government – the other two branches having surrendered their powers to him – he is working to corrupt the data to his own purposes. There have been lots of comparisons to China’s practice of lying about economic performance, and that the Soviet Union famously did the same.
What some observers fail to observe is that lying about the facts is an entrenched practice among GOP-dominated state governments, particularly in the oil and cattle states.
Here’s a recent example from Texas, in involving oil:
https://archive.is/gTJLc#selection-1179.1-1179.65
Ag-gag laws prohibiting filming or photography in slaughterhouses without permission exist in at least seven U.S. states.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag
At the federal level, let’s not forget the Dickey amendment, which effectively prevented the use government funds to research gun violence:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/federal-government-study-gun-violence/story?id=50300379
And ATF’s 20-year hiatus in publishing its gun violence report:
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/10/1153977949/major-takeaways-from-the-atf-gun-violence-report
The right has long had a dislike for facts. Little Antoni’s fiddling with the annual report on household consumption from BLS is just one more example of the GOP’s authoritarian tendencies:
https://econbrowser.com/archives/2025/09/six-measures-of-nonfarm-payroll-employment#comment-321109
Chinny,
you are so mean. I cannot believe the recession whisperer is wrong. the man is a genius!!
The Southeastern U.S. has notably lower life expectancy compared to many other U.S. regions. Why? Research shows that the toll from major storms (hurricanes, tropical cyclones) is much greater than the immediate death count. It includes what are called “excess deaths” over many years after a storm strikes. For storms in the U.S., one analysis (looking at storms from ~1930-2015) estimates that each tropical cyclone causes on the order of 7,000 to 11,000 extra deaths over the 15 years following the event (not counting the immediate deaths at landfall, etc.). https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/10/study-links-hurricanes-to-higher-death-rates-long-after-storms-pass
The Trump admin response? Eliminate the NOAA “Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters Report,” an annual report tracking the costs of large disasters, the 2024 will be its last. It is not just BLS data – the Trump administration doesn’t want you to know about extreme weather events and why your insurance rates are going up.
Yes! This paper is a wonderful piece of research. Answers a big question and raises more.
The authors held off publishing for quite some time, trying to figure out how they messed up. Couldn’t find an error.
Gotta admire these guys.
this is not surprising at all. i have lived through several large hurricane disasters in the united states. i was very fortunate to not have significant impact during the event itself. but the aftermath? yes, these events are significant. they cause long term stress on a body both during and after, that will impact health. and many times, people do not have the time or resources to receive preventive and acute medical care in the weeks and months that follow such events. too busy picking up the pieces of a damaged home. previous doctor no longer servicing the area. it is very difficult to get a new doctor in an area that has recently received significant damage. financial situations become acute-something fema can help with if it still exists. anybody ever deal with an insurance company after a hurricane? lets just say, you are rarely in good hands. older folks and those already in mental and financial distress are probably the most susceptible to negative outcomes. public transportation can take weeks or longer to return to service. there is a cost to each of these failures, and it adds up over time. people like steven kopits have denied this impact (see his comments on puerto rico hurricane), but there is not doubt in my mind these issues exist. i have seen them first hand.
By the way NOAA’s Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters Report shows a rising trend: the U.S. now averages more than 20 such events per year, compared to ~5 per year in the 1990s. Cumulative damages since 1980 exceed $2.7 trillion, with hurricanes, floods, and severe convective storms the costliest. The Southeast and Gulf Coast—regions already facing lower life expectancy—are the most exposed. And the GOP political leadership knows this full well that this is a huge economic growth drag on the part of the country where that have absolute sway. There is a GDP growth impact with capital loss, productivity decline, migration pressure. Infrastructure destruction and business interruption lower annual GDP growth by an estimated 0.2–0.4 percentage points and lost workdays and health effects (e.g., storm-related respiratory and cardiovascular illness, trauma) reduce labor-force participation. Migration outflows from repeatedly affected counties erode regional tax bases and strain receiving communities and inflationary pressure: supply-chain shocks. And there is a distributional asymmetry: vulnerable households hardest hit. Low-income households—already disadvantaged under P.L. 119-21 by SNAP/Medicaid reductions—lack savings or insurance to buffer disaster shocks. Wealth destruction deepens inequality, reinforcing the stagflationary tilt toward lower growth with higher living costs. If only – the mainstream media would let these communities know how badly their GOP leaders are failing them.
Birds of a feather felon together:
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/tom-homan-cash-contracts-trump-doj-investigation-rcna232568
Two little distractions from the assault on democracy:
Conservatives love tradition, and so it is that Argentina is engaged in the fine old tradition of financial collapse:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/2111290/argentina-economy-currency-collapse-crisis
In a separate matter – separate other than both developments likely to make life difficult for Brazil and Chile – we are apparently intent on deposing Venezuela’s government:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/us/politics/trump-venezuela-military-buildup.html
Deposing Maduro would put Venezuela’s oil resources in play, an opportunity no peace-loving candidate could pass up.
The the FBI has it on video tape of two FBI agents posing as businessmen handing thuggish border czar Tom Homan a literal shopping bag with filled with $50,000 cash for promises to steer border security contracts to them.
And the Trump DOJ killed the investigation. Who in the DOJ? Why none other than Emil Bove, former Trump personal attorney, deputy attorney general and now lifetime Appeals Court judge. This is the same Emil Bove who dismissed bribery charges against Eric Adams in a quid pro quo for assisting the Trump administration on immigrant deportations in New York City.
What did Homan do with the cash? Put it in his freezer? Buy Bitcoin? Deposit it in his bank account? Did he pay income taxes on it — oh, wait, thanks to the OBBB there’s no tax on tips this year.
Forget the Epstein files. Subpoena the Homan tapes. It would be great to see Homan grabbing a shopping bag full of cash like a Mafia wiseguy. He looks the part straight out of central casting.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump tosses him under the bus. If there is one thing Trump cannot abide it is someone grifting off his name on the side without him getting a cut.
What did Homan do with the cash?
Well, judging by his waistline I’d say he bought a lot of donuts.
The FBI gives Homan $50,000 in cash and he walks away and the FBI just writes it off? They don’t even ask him to give it back? Talk about wingnut welfare. Where’s DOGE when you need them?