Merrill Lynch has a real unemployment estimate out and it ain't pretty.

what the official unemployment rate misses is the vast degree of ‘underemployment’ as companies cut back on the hours that people who are still employed are working. Those hours have declined 1.2 percent in the past 12 months.

The BLS still counts people as employed if they are working part time, but the number of workers who have been forced into that status because of slack economic conditions has ballooned nearly 70 percent in the past year, according to the study. Rosenberg said was that was a record growth rate for the 15-year period he has studied.

And here’s the ugly part: When that amount of slack in employment is taken into account, Rosenberg found that the ‘real’ unemployment rate has actually climbed to 13.9 percent, an all-time high for the period he studied. And that figure is up from 13.5 percent in December and 11.2 percent a year ago.

Not good.

Meanwhile over at NumbersUSA a group for reduced immigration, he points out if there was a freeze on guest worker visas, the U.S. could gain 3 million jobs.

I read this and thought, ya know, considering the economic conditions, importing foreign workers, they have one hell of a point. 13.9%

Shame they did not add all of the Federal and State contracts which are offshored. Instead of adding to the Federal deficit if the United States simply canceled all of those contracts and brought those jobs into the United States, I wonder just how many jobs that would be...and that's not going into debt to get them.