Reminders about the unemployment rate, for the holdouts

[Recursion]

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.pdf

BLS conducts a monthly survey of about 100,000 people and asks questions like:

1. Does anyone in this household have a business or farm?
2. Last week, did you do any work for (either) pay (or profit)?
If the answer to question 1 is "yes" and the answer to question 2 is "no," the next
question is:
3. Last week, did you do any unpaid work in the family business or farm?
For those who reply "no" to both questions 2 and 3, the next key questions used to
determine employment status are:
4. Last week, (in addition to the business) did you have a job, either full or part
time? Include any job from which you were temporarily absent.
5. Last week, were you on layoff from a job?
6. What was the main reason you were absent from work last week?
For those who respond "yes" to question 5 about being on layoff, the following
questions are asked:
7. Has your employer given you a date to return to work?
If "no," the next question is:
8. Have you been given any indication that you will be recalled to work within the
next 6 months?
If the responses to either question 7 or 8 indicate that the person expects to be
recalled from layoff, he or she is counted as unemployed. For those who were
reported as having no job or business from which they were absent or on layoff, the
next question is:
9. Have you been doing anything to find work during the last 4 weeks?
For those who say "yes," the next question is:
10. What are all of the things you have done to find work during the last 4 weeks?
If an active method of looking for work, such as those listed at the beginning of this
section, is mentioned, the following question is asked:
11. Last week, could you have started a job if one had been offered?

Based on the responses, those individuals are categorized as employed, underemployed, unemployed, or out of the labor force. A big computer program then extrapolates those data based on what the Census tells us about the national population, and they come up with five different unemployment levels.

The BLS then compiles these numbers into 6 different unemployment rates:

U1: People not working, for any reason, for 15 weeks or longer (long-term unemployed)
U2: People who lost their jobs or completed temporary work
U3: People who are not working but have actively looked for a job in the past 4 weeks (this is "The Unemployment Rate ®&quot
U4: U3 + people in U2 who are not actively looking for work
U5: Roughly, U4 + day / casual laborers
U6: U5 + people working part time who want to work full time

Can we please, please, please give up on conspiracy theories about these numbers being manipulated?

[Egnever]

1. What fun would that be?

[JayhawkSD]

2. Well, define "manipluated."

Just look at how difficult it is to be classified as "unemployed." You have to answer eleven questions in precisely the right sequence with precisely the right answers. One answer wrong and, bingo, you are not unemployed. You may not have a job, you may be peniless and unable to pay your bills or feed your family, but you do not fit the definition of "unemployed."

Manipulated? Of course not. Who needs to manipulate numbers which are generated in this manner?

[Recursion]

3. No, it's pretty easy to be counted as "unemplyed"

Do you depend on a business you don't own for your wages?

Are you working for wages right now?

Have you tried to work for wages in the past month?

That makes you "unemployed"

[whatthehey]

4. It's not a fucking differential calculus test

I doubt there are too many people except the profoundly mentally disabled who could conceivably get any of those questions wrong.

Are you working for pay?
Do you want to?
Have you tried, even once, in the last month to find a job?


How fucking hard are they to get right?

[pinqy]

6. It's a little more complicated

If a student is currently not working, but did look in the last four weeks to get a job after graduation, s/he is not unemployed because s/he is not available.That doesn't just apply to students, but anyone not currently available.

And you're unemployed whether or not you looked if you're on temporary layoff and expect to return to your job. In October 2013 many furloughed government workers were classified as "employed, not at work," when they should have been classified as unemployed, but they insisted they had a nob and the interviewer has to record what they're told even if they know it's wrong.

[pinqy]

5. I'm confused by how you got the definitions wrong.

The U-1 and U-2 you have correct, although they also have the same requirements for job search as the U-3.

The U-3 is mostly right (you must also have been available to start work during the reference week, and those on temporary layoff are unemployed whether or not they looked).

The U-4 is Unemployed plus discouraged workers: those who want and are available for work and searched in the last year but not last week and stopped looking because they believed they would be unsuccessful. The U-2 has nothing to do with it.

The U-5 has nothing to do with day labor, but includes all marginally attache (same definition as discouraged but stopped looking for any reason (mostly family issues or school)

The U-6 you have right.