Hedge fund star Kyle Bass, founder of Hayman Capital Management, says the unemployment rate reported by the government — 6.1 percent in August — greatly understates the magnitude of joblessness.
"The way unemployment is calculated is it's semi-rigged," he tells
CNBC. "It will trend down to the 5 percent range just because people stop looking for a job."
Counting people who have dropped out of the workforce since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2008, the unemployment rate would be 11 percent, Bass argues.
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That weakness in the job market is one reason why we don't have to worry about the fact that the federal funds rate is unlikely to return to its historical norm of 4 percent anytime soon, he said.
The Federal Reserve' target for the rate has stood at a record low of zero to 0.25 percent since December 2008.
Going back to the norm would also increase the government debt too much, Bass notes. "With every 100 basis points [increase], it costs us fiscally about $150 billion in interest."
Meanwhile, William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, writes in his weekly
Wall Street Journal column that "the American economy hasn't worked for average families since the end of the Clinton administration."
Median household income totaled $51,939 in 2013, down 8 percent from 2007.
"The median earnings for Americans working full-time year round haven't changed much since 2007," Galston writes. "But more than five years into the recovery, there are fewer such workers than before the recession."
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