The real extent of unemployment is considerably worse than indicated by the already grim official unemployment rate. Making bad things worse, a majority of the unemployed don't receive the unemployment compensation insurance that they paid for while working. "Stingy" is the adjective that best describes the amounts paid out to the small percentage of the unemployed that does receive compensation. Within broad federal guidelines, each of the 50 states defines its own unemployment compensation scheme. New York State is especially stingy towards its unemployed.

Those are the stark labor force facts of life facing Americans in general, and New Yorkers in particular.

Stark fact number one: the official unemployment rate quoted by politicians and the media �9.8 percent nationally as of September � is disturbing enough. The real extent of unemployment, however, is much worse. An alternative and more comprehensive counting of people out of work, which many economists call the "real rate of unemployment," stood at 17 percent.

Thus the disturbing becomes frightening. That's more than one out of every six people in the workforce. And both the standard and more comprehensive unemployment rates continue to rise in this so-called "jobless recovery."

How many of today's jobless would agree, in the face of official unemployment rates likely to rise above 10 percent and stay that way throughout 2010, that mild upturns in financial markets constitute a genuine recovery?

To be fair, Washington's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) sheds exemplary light on labor markets via its alternative measurements of unemployment. Since 1994, the BLS began publishing six alternative takes on unemployment and under-employment that are termed, sensibly, U1, U2, U3, U4, U5, and U6. Those neutral labels avoid inevitable political debates over what to call the specific dimensions of unemployment covered by the six alternative counts.

Current government and media practice is to call U3, which measures the unemployed as a percentage of the civilian labor force, the "official rate of unemployment." In formal terms, it's really one of six alternative official rates, and one which seriously under-measures joblessness.

Two kinds of unemployment are missed by the usual "official" U3 rate. First, when people are so discouraged that they stop looking for work because none is likely to be available, they are no longer counted as part of the labor force � thus they are no longer defined as unemployed. Second, some people involuntarily work part-time because their hours were cut, or they only found part-time work after losing a full-time job. Those lost hours are not counted.

So BLS economists created the comprehensive U6 definition of unemployment. It counts both people marginalized from the labor force, and hours lost through involuntarily working part-time. A growing number of economists refer to U6 as the "real rate of unemployment," as opposed to the artificially lower official rate.

America's real rate of unemployment was 17 percent in September, up, yet again, from 16.8 percent in August. And it is likely to worsen during the months ahead. That's more than 25 million people out of work � more people than every man, woman and child living in New York State and Connecticut combined.

Another alternative BLS unemployment count is just as unnerving. This is the U1, long-term unemployment, operationally defined as being jobless for 15 weeks or longer.

Long-term employment more than doubled during the past year, up from 2.3 percent of the labor force in September, 2008, to 5.4 percent in September, 2009. Additionally, the U1 under-measures long-term unemployment because it does not count marginalized workers.

Stark fact number two: less than half the people who are out of work actually get any form of unemployment compensation. Labor force economist Dr. Marianne Hill's diligent mining of unemployment compensation data yields a grimly precise count of this stinginess.

Only 37 percent of unemployed Americans collected regular unemployment compensation in 2008. Another 7 percent received payments from various special programs targeted mainly at people who had not found a job before hitting the maximum number of weeks permitted by their home state's unemployment compensation program.

And compensation eligibility rules have not kept up with deep changes in how people work. These rules were defined decades ago. Hill estimates that 30 percent of working Americans now have jobs which are "nonstandard" in terms of the previous, manufacturing-dominated economy � thus they don't qualify for unemployment compensation. This includes legions of part-time, temporary, contract, on-demand, and self-employed workers.

What's more, America's average unemployment payout is low compared to other industrialized countries. Hill concludes that U.S. weekly unemployment compensation payments averaged $300, only 35 percent of the average national weekly wage of $854 dollars in 2008.

That's neither a whole lot to live on, nor a whole lot of money to re-channel into a recessionary economy. Unemployed people typically spend most or all of their unemployment payments on necessities, which pumps significant cash into local businesses. This may be one important reason why most European countries, with more generous unemployment payments over longer periods of time, are recovering more quickly from the world recession than is the U.S.

This year's stimulus package, the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act," will extend and improve unemployment compensation to a certain degree � for people living in the states who opt into the new program � and if an extension of unemployment benefits is not procedurally blocked by a determined core of Republican senators.

Stark fact three: unemployed New Yorkers are even more out of luck. States are allowed to fix their own unemployment insurance payouts within loose federal standards. New York's maximum payouts have been frozen since 2000, with no indexing for inflation. Our payouts are much less than those in nearby New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. And proportionately fewer unemployed New Yorkers actually receive unemployment insurance compensation than in these neighboring states.

Pay more, get less. Welcome to New York.