[Pen-l] query: unemployment measurement.

["Jim Devine" <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

According to Kevin Phillips in the May 2008 HARPERS, "after the
inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961, when high jobless numbers
marred [his administration's] image ... the new administration
appointed a committee to weigh changes. The result, implemented a few
years later, was that out of work Americans who had stopped looking
for jobs ... were labeled "discouraged workers" and excluded from the
ranks of the unemployed, where many, if not most, had been previously
classified."

is this true?

In any event, that reclassification has been applied to _all_ official
estimates of unemployment, going back to when the numbers started. So
what really counts to economists wasn't changed much. What's important
is not levels of the unemployment rate but its changes. The exclusion
of the "discouraged" from the official unemployment rate does smooth
out its fluctuations a bit, but I haven't seen any research indicating
that the trend is changed by this re-calculation. Anyway, it's as easy
as pie to re-calculate the official rate, adding them back in. In
fact, the BLS now provides about 6 different rates so we can pick and
choose.
-- 
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
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