Booms, Busts, and Recoveries Message Board

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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries

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To: Ramsey Su who wrote (39182)	10/10/2003 1:17:36 PM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (4) of 74559

In this day and age, there is absolutely no reason why, especially the jobless claims, cannot be actual to the last guy who walked in to the unemployment office Friday pm in Hawaii (that being the latest time zone for US). Many unemployed don't ever show up in an unemployment office. They do know the exact number of jobless claims (within a small margin of error) but this is not what defines unemployment. To understand why this is so all you have to do is ask yourself how it is that you count someone in the ranks of the unemployed, whose unemployment benefits have run out (they last six months) but is still looking for a job. Under the current definition of unemployment, this person is unemployed but would not come up in the stats for unemployment insurance claims. Using statistical sampling that person is counted. The unemployment rate differs significantly from those receiving unemployment insurance during times when jobs are harder to find. Also, how about self employed people whose business has failed who are looking for a job, they don't get unemployment insurance payments. How about a woman whose children are grown up and is looking for work? The list goes on and on of these kinds of situations. Statistical sampling is a very accurate method of counting over a large population when counting every instance in a timely fashion is impractical even though the public has little trust of it. What they don't know is how frequently it is employed in the hard science that the safety of their lives depends on! If you don't believe in the accuracy of statistical sampling you may not want to get blood work done or use prescription drugs, or drive a car or fly for that matter. Don't breathe the air because the EPA uses it to test the air and for Pete's sake don't drink the water. Here's a pretty good layman's explanation of the methods employed and the reasoning behind them. If you want to argue the validity of their model on a scientific basis you have to order the white paper detailing the method precisely, but I'll warn you, you better have a background in statistics to get through it: bls.gov

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