The Misery Index: What if both unemployment and inflation rates are rising?

A high or rising unemployment rate is not a desirable phenomenon. Similarly, high inflation is not covetable. What if both are rising or both remain high? That would be a terrible outcome.

American economist Arthur Okun is credited to have proposed a Misery Index in the 1960s. The Misery Index is the arithmetical sum of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate. It measures the misery that a society suffers as a result of high unemployment and high inflation. During the America's boom period in the 1960s, the Misery Index in the United States was around 7. During the second