There were about 30,000 first time unemployment claims around the nation last week.
That's 4 times greater than U.S. Labor Department officials expected.
In New Hampshire, the official unemployment rate is the same as last year, about 4.2 percent.
But neither the state nor the national unemployment rate includes people who've stopped looking for work, because they've been jobless for so long.
New Hampshire Public Radio's David Darman has more.
About 20 people, mostly men, showed up in Londonderry for a biweekly meeting of the Nutfield Networking group.
Several of these former professionals had been out of work for many months.
Dave Dubia of Manchester is 51 years old.
He was initially reluctant to discuss his situation.
you don't want to talk to me, i'm bitter and i'm angry.(laughter)that's exactly the kind of person i want to talk to (laughter)
Dubia used to be a customer service representative at Malden Mills, a textile plant in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
But he lost the job in November.
A year earlier he'd been uemployed for about 17 months.
Because of these long layoffs, Dubia isn't eligible anymore for unemployment benefits.
i was laid off out of massachusetts, so i exhausted my benefits there. and i have no benefits or services available in nh.
Former high tech managers, engineers, and sales professionals come to Nutfield Networking to get help with their job search skills.
They also meet to let off steam and trade information about job leads.
For former manager Barry Nestor of Milford, the leads have not been fruitful.
Nestor used to work for Compaq computers until he was let go nearly 3 years ago.
Since then, the 46 year old Nestor has taken on work in a department store.
But he says it doesn't pay enough to support his family.
i've used up most of the money i had in a 401k, because, it costs a certain amount of money to get by. we're in deep, deep debt now. and its not getting any better. :18
Despite the fact that Nestor is underemployed and Dubia is unemployed, the state counts neither of them when calculating the unemployment rate.
Anita Josten is a research analyst at New Hampshire's Employment Security Department.
She says the rules are clear about who is included in the rate, and who's not.
if they're still looking for work, yes, they're counted in the statistics. its those that have gotten to the point where they're not looking for work or they've decided to go back to school full time, and not look for work until later, those people are not included, because they're not actively looking for work.
When Josten says "looking for work", she means people who report their activities to Employment Security.
People collecting benefits have the greatest incentive to report the details of their job search.
People not collecting have less reason to report in.
The Bush administration says the President's tax cuts have led to 750,000 new jobs in the last 7 months.
But Democrats claim 2 million people have lost their jobs during the Bush Administration.
Politicians from both sides use the unemployment rate published by the U.S. labor Department to make their claims.
But some economists say a more accurate unemployment rate can be calculated by including the nations' Dubia's and Nestors.
Dr. Sung Won Sohn is the chief economist at Wells Fargo.
He says these alternate methods use the official rate as a starting point for calculating a more accurate one.
25 152. for example some people add not only the unemployment rate published by the u.s. government, and the state agencies, but also add in part time employees and discouraged, potential employees. and if you look at it that way, the jobless rate is obviously in double digits not at 5.6 percent at the national level. 25 219
U.S. Department of Labor statistics say more than a half million Americans have stopped looking for work.
Another 4.5 million people are working part-time because they can't find full time jobs.
Bruce Rotenberg of Litchfield ran out of unemployment benefits a few weeks ago.
He's applied to Wal Mart and Home Depot for part time work.
i'm hoping something will happen where i can just get a job even its part time, just to have, one something to do, and also to have some, small amount of money coming in.....
For NHPR news, I'm DD
