Break Out the Double Digit: Mass Unemployment in the City of New Brunswick

Abstract

Every month the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes its nationwide unemployment figures. Break Out the Double Digit challenges the theories and methods behind the BLS procedures and documents a condition of mass un- and underemployment in the City of New Brunswick, New Jersey. This study zeroes in on those statistical tricks and mystifications used by the BLS to understate the unemployment situation. The study also reports on one of the first published local efforts to gather empirical data on the real extent of unemploy ment — a situation which manifests itself in double-digit numbers cutting across almost every sex, racial and class category.