When the Misery Index Is Too Upbeat

The Huffington Post has launched a new monthly feature it’s calling the “Real Misery Index,” which it says offers a more accurate snapshot of the economic struggles Americans face today than the original one.

Developed in the 1970s by Arthur Okun, a Yale and Brookings Institution economist, the Misery Index is calculated by adding the unemployment rate and inflation rate.

“Unfortunately, it’s not a very useful statistic,” HuffPo’s Marcus Baram writes, since its unemployment figure excludes part-timers and people who have stopped looking for work.

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