Women Born Transsexual

Amid the grim news about local government losses and feeble private sector growth, today’s jobs report shows that those who aren’t even counted in the official unemployment rate fared uniformly worse in September.

The number of people who are working part-time for economic reasons — meaning they would rather have a full-time job but could only secure a part-time one — rose by 612,000 to 9.5 million.

The group of people known as those marginally attached to the labor force, which means they want work and have looked within the last 12 months but did not search during the four weeks preceding the Labor Department’s survey, increased to 2.5 million in September from 2.2 million a year ago.

And discouraged workers, those who have stopped looking for work because they don’t believe there are any jobs available, increased by 503,000 from a year earlier, to 1.3 million.

All of these people weigh on a broader measure of unemployment, which rose to 17.1 percent in September, up from 16.7 percent in August and the highest it has been since April.

None of these numbers are going in the direction they should given that the economy is officially in recovery.