NOT SINCE 1982

(h/t The Big Picture) The unemployment rate isn't bad so far but the proportion of people without jobs hasn't been this high in over 25 years.

Many More Are Jobless Than Are Unemployed
By FLOYD NORRIS
Published: April 12, 2008
NY Times

Men in the prime of their working lives are now less likely to have jobs than they were during all but one recession of the last 60 years.

Among men ages 25 to 54 — a range that starts after most people finish their education and ends well before most people retire — the unemployment rate is 4.1 percent.

In the latest report, for March, the Labor Department reported the jobless rate — also called the “not employed rate” by some — at 13.1 percent for men in the prime age group. Only once during a post-World War II recession did the rate ever get that high. It hit 13.3 percent in June 1982, the 12th month of the brutal 1981-82 recession, and continued to rise from there.