The shock here isn’t the news that CBS reports, but the fact that CBS reports it at all — or at least before the midterm elections. Give 60 Minutes full credit here; they don’t soften the blow. Indeed, they report that the actual number of unemployed, underemployed, and those who have given up looking for work altogether puts the unemployment rate at almost double the awful 9.6% mark used by the Department of Labor, and instead hits 17% nationwide and 22% in California:

Big Government picks up the story, and puts it in the proper context:

To put a face on the realities of the underemployed in America under Obamanomincs, reporter Scott Pelley spoke with a fiber-optics engineering manager who has been looking for work for over a year. He just took a job working at a Target. 20% of the unemployed in America have college degrees.

According to the report, 1/3 of the unemployed have been out of work for over a year. This hasn’t [happened] since the Great Depression.

Airing one week before the mid-term elections, this report explains better than anything, exactly what is at stake for our country on November 2.

In order to correct this, we need to curtail the enormous expansion of federal spending and regulation that has sidelined investment, especially the massive uncertainties of ObamaCare and the pending cap-and-trade bill. That won’t happen unless we remove the Democrats who have added over four trillion dollars to the national debt and saddled the US with a federal health-care takeover that voters didn’t want. It may be one of the most timely reports from 60 Minutes in years.