Employment in the U.S. - it is really much worse

The facts:
Unemployment rate - 9.8% from 9.7%
Payrolls - down 263,000 from the previous month
Job losses since Dec 2007 - 7.2 million
September 2009 was the 21st month in a row of shrinking employment. While history for this data only goes back to 1939 this is the longest losing streak since the government started keeping track in 1939.
But it really is much worse...
The household survey - which seeks to determine whether or not people are working by asking them about their individual job status rather than asking companies - for September was a staggering job loss of 785,000.
But it really is much worse...
The impact of the severity of this recession, coupled with the weakness of the 2002-2007 expansion, is that private employment is below where it was at its December 2000 peak. It has not been a great start to the century.
But it really is much worse...
Many consider U-6 as a more reliable indicator of the employment situation. U-6 reached a new peak of 17% in September, up from 16.8% the previous month, and up from 10.6% a year earlier. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' U-6 tracks part-time jobholders who really want a full-time job but can not find one as well as "marginally attached workers". In real numbers it looks like the following:
Marginally attached: 2.2 million
Invountary part-timers: 9.2 million
"Formally unemployed": 15.1 million
The total is 26+ million people not going shopping, not eating out, not taking their families out.