Gallup reported an unemployment rate (not seasonally adjusted) of 10.2 percent in mid-March, which is virtually unchanged from the unemployment rate of 10.3 percent it found at the end of February 2011.  Worse yet, Gallup’s polling shows that the unemployment rate has been creeping up in 2011 and has returned to the 10-plus percent level Gallup found a year ago.

The underemployment rate has also increased and climbed back to the level it was a year ago, Gallup reported. Underemployment in mid-March 2011 was 19.9 percent, trending upward since the start of the year, as shown in the chart below, and has climbed back to the levels it reached in early 2010.

These findings, rather than the BLS unemployment and underemployment rates, are more consistent with the lackluster or non-existent job market that our interviewees that our interviewees describe.  They say — the government keeps saying that things are getting better, but I don’t see it.