One of the ways that unemployment is understated is that in bad times, you see an explosion in the number of people who work part time.

This is one of the numbers that you rarely, if ever, see reported in the press, and it is not a pretty picture.

Graph pr0n courtesy of Calculated Risk, who to his credit notes that this is not population adjusted, it goes back to 1960, which was a recession year itself, but does note that the near vertical rise in the involuntary part-time is as bad as has been seen over those 48 years.

It’s about a 75% increase over the past 12 months.