<<I've never known even one person who's been "surveyed" for this purpose, nor have I ever heard of one reported in the press.>>
What Grace told you is true, and you can find more than you ever want to know about unemployment statistics methodology and the survey right here:
bls.gov
In my other life, I worked in the office where these statistics and many others were issued to the news media promptly at 8:30 a.m. on the appointed day.
Whether you "trust" the stats or not, they're all we've got to measure things by, so you might as well trust them. Otherwise, you'll have to also mistrust even those statistics which some people use to make a point that you agree with.
As for trusting any statistics as gospel, I doubt the layoff figures issued by companies are all that accurate either as a mesurement of what's going on.
Examples: layoffs which are scheduled to be phased in over a period of time, but are given as a lump sum number. No doubt, during the phase-in period, some employees will voluntarily leave their jobs during this time and thus their jobs could be called "attrition" rather than layoffs. Some employees will decide to take retirement a little earlier than otherwise, and won't technically be unemployed. Some employees will be outplaced to other jobs in other companies or other parts of the same company, and some employees will always be likely to quickly find jobs elsewhere.
Statistics are just statistics, and all have a margin for error. (I'm married to a statistician/programmer/systems analyst--pretty boring stuff, but sometimes a fantastic statistic makes for a great newspaper headline or a sharp increase/decrease in the stock market.) |
