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

To: Bill who wrote (513157)	12/19/2003 3:31:55 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

The whole issue of hedonic weighting and chain-weighting has been much discussed. Go to the DoL Web site and read the appendixes for the unemployment reports. The methodology is explained there. As to the ongoing debates about the 'good or the bad' about the changes... I refer you to the American Economist, or to Google. Some people --- those of a more conspiratorical mindset... not I --- :) Have maintained that there are political benefits (during a period with very high numbers of "discouraged un & under-employed persons") to not counting those that have fallen off of the unemployment rolls when their benefits expired, or those that are "discouraged", in the "headline unemployment number" that is given out to the media. There are possibly political benefits to ASSUMING that those who no longer draw unemployment have ACTUALLY found work in some small start-up business, or on the black market, and so aren't unemployed anymore. Those ASSUMED "new hires" are added to the total statistics... along with the ACTUAL hiring numbers that business reports --- and go some long way to explaining why the headline number is so low....