How many really suffer as a result of labor market problems? This is one of the most critical yet contentious social policy questions. {{U}}(9) {{/U}}. Unemployment does not have the same consequences today as it did in the 1930s when most of the unemployed were primary breadwinners, {{U}}(10) {{/U}}, and when there were no compensating social programs for those failing in the labor market. Increasing wealth, the rise of families with more than one wage earner, and improved social welfare protection have unquestionably lightened the consequences of joblessness. {{U}}(11) {{/U}}. Among the millions with hourly earnings at or below the minimum wage level, the overwhelming majority are from multiple-earner, relatively rich families. Most of those counted by the poverty statistics are elderly or handicapped or have family responsibilities which keep them out of the labor force, so the poverty statistics are by no means an accurate indicator of labor market problems.

{{U}}(12) {{/U}}. The unemployment counts exclude the millions of fully employed workers whose wages are so low that their families remain in poverty. Low wages and repeated or prolonged unemployment frequently interact to undermine the capacity for self-support. {{U}}(13) {{/U}}, those who suffer as a result of forced idleness can equal Or exceed average annual unemployment, even though only a minority of the jobless in any month really suffer. For every person counted in the monthly unemployment records, there is another working part time because of the inability to find full time, or else outside the labor force but wanting a job. Finally, income transfers in our country have always focused on the elderly, disabled, and dependent, neglecting the needs of the working poor, so that the dramatic expansion of cash and in-kind transfers does not necessarily mean that those failing in the labor market are adequately protected.

{{U}}(14) {{/U}}, it is uncertain whether those suffering seriously as a result of labor market problems number in the hundreds of thousands or the tens of millions, and, hence, whether high levels of joblessness can be tolerated or must be countered by job creation and economic stimulus. There is only one area of agreement in this debate—that the existing poverty, employment, and earnings statistics are inadequate for one of their primary applications, measuring the consequences of labor market problems.
A. since the number experiencing joblessness at some time during the year is several times the number unemployed in any month
B. as a result of such contradictory evidence
C. when most people couldn't find a job and suffered from hunger
D. people who do part-time job are more than those full-time worker
E. earnings and income data also overstate the dimensions of hardship
F. when income and earnings were usually much closer to the margin of living
G. in many ways, our social statistics exaggerate the degree of hardship
H. yet there are also many ways our social statistics underestimate the degree of labor-market-related hardship