I ran across a blog posting today by someone named Chef Sheila, but it appears as if the article itself was done by someone else judging by the first paragraph that praises “this journalist’s informative piece” (unless she’s vainly referring to and complimenting herself).

Be that as it may, the piece is called “Meltdown 101: Unemployment by the numbers,” and it starts off by factoring in categories of unemployed and underemployed that the “official” figures excludes and comes up with a total unemployment rate for December 2008 of 21 million people, or 13.5 percent unemployed. That’s compared to the official rate of 7.2 percent, or 11.1 million.

If you want more details on how that figure was pieced together, just hit the hot link above, but what I personally found most interesting was a breakdown of unemployment by category, to wit:

DECEMBER UNEMPLOYMENT RATE BY GROUP:

7.2 percent: Adult men
5.9 percent: Adult women
9.5 percent: Female heads of households
5.1 percent: Asians
6.6 percent: Whites
9.2 percent: Hispanics
11.9 percent: Blacks
20.8 percent: Teenagers
15.3 percent: Construction workers
17 percent: Agriculture workers
2.3 percent: Government workers

There is a wealth of other statistics and information available, so hit the ol’ hot link above. When I finally read to the end of the article, I realized that it had been taken from AP (without permission?) and was written by AP Business Writer Ellen Simon.