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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (513069)	12/19/2003 3:08:08 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Re: "nationally, the number of people in the civilian labor force (working or looking for work) ROSE in November by 484k while the numbers "not in labor force" (not employed and no longer looking) FELL by 244k." >>> As I was attempting to point out: that's because they changed the definitions. >>> Those numbers you referred to only report NEW unemployment claims (still, valuable info.), but not the total of the unemployed. >>> I believe that --- under the new definition DoL uses, if you haven't 'actively' looked for work in the past (either one month, or two months... I'll have to look the exact definition up), then you are no longer classed as "unemployed". >>> If you look in the appendix ('buried' pretty deep!) of the monthly unemployment reports, you will see the estimate of TOTAL unemployed (which includes those so discouraged that they are no longer actively searching). >>> The other 'statistical trick' employed to keep the headline number low is 'hedonic weighting'. >>> The government ASSUMES that several hundred thousand new jobs are being created in the small business community (although it has no hard numbers to back that up), and it lumps those ASSUMED 'new hires' into the official statistics.