True Rate of Unemployment
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
LISEP's alternative unemployment measure hits 24.9% in July 2026 vs official 4.1%.
The Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP) defines the True Rate of Unemployment (TRU) as the percentage of the U.S. labor force that is functionally unemployed: lacking a full-time job (35+ hours/week) while wanting one, jobless, or earning below a living wage pegged at $26,000 annually (2025 dollars). For July 2026, the TRU stood at 24.9% versus the headline Bureau of Labor Statistics rate of 4.1%. TRU data shows breakdowns by race, sex, and education, with the highest functional unemployment among those without a high school diploma (50.3%) and females (31.0%). LISEP argues this metric provides policymakers a more accurate measure of financial well-being than standard unemployment figures.
What commenters are saying
Commenters split over whether the TRU is genuinely revealing or merely a repackaged U-6 measure with a living-wage threshold. Some argue the official U-3 rate is misleading and the TRU exposes persistent structural underemployment, especially among minorities and the less educated. Others counter that the $26,000 living-wage cutoff is arbitrary and that similar metrics for other G-7 nations would yield comparable results, making it less a revelation than a relabeling. Several note the cliff effect where earning slightly more triggers loss of transfers, trapping households in effective poverty. A few question the metric's volatility for policymaking.