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It's amazing how the unemployment rate gets treated as gospel in the media. I never see the actual jobless rate reported anywhere. Why is that? The incentive

It's amazing how the unemployment rate gets treated as gospel in the media. I never see the actual jobless rate reported anywhere. Why is that? The incentive for politicians to prop themselves up with the unemployment rate is clear. But why does the media never push back? Does "jobless" data - that is ACTUAL unemployment- not exist?

mperham 7y ago
There are actually six different "unemployment" metrics, each with different criteria about who counts. https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm
xyzzyz 7y ago
Of course the data exists. See eg. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25TTUSM156S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25TTUSM156S The issue people are talking about unemployment rate and not the joblessness rate is that people care about ability to get a job if you want one. The joblessness rate includes people who are looking for job but can’t get any, but also people who are supported by their spouses, retirees, and people living on government benefits who are not looking for job, because they are disabled, too busy with childcare, or care for other people needing it, or ultimately too lazy and having too little self-respect to stop living on charity of others. This wide aggregation makes it very difficult to understand what actually causes changes in it: are more people jobless because of expansion of disability benefits? Or maybe there was a surge of people retiring early? You need to look at other indicators to understand it. For example, good amount of growth of employment rate in recent years is a result of many people, who previously drew disability benefits to compensate them for their inability to work, actually going to work, once the work became better option than government check. For this reason, unemployment rate is a better metric to look at, because it tells you something more useful and has better signal to noise ratio.
- ska 7y ago
  > "For example, good amount of growth of employment rate in recent years is a result of many people, who previously drew disability benefits to compensate them for their inability to work, actually going to work, once the work became better option than government check." I've heard this before but have not seen good data on it, do you have cites?
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
    I saw a good graph a while ago that matched growth in new workers with disability terminations, but this is pretty apparent when you look at the disability statistics themselves: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/dibStat.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/dibStat.html Number of people drawing disability benefits was rapidly growing at around 5% YoY up till 2011, then its growth slowed significantly, and around 2014 it started to slowly fall.
    - benmccann 7y ago
      Here's one chart I found showing the relationship between disability and unemployment statistics: http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/trimtabs-disability.png http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/trimta...
- alexilliamson 7y ago
  Sure I agree that the typically reported unemployment measure is best for measuring how easily people who want jobs can obtain them. However, so often this is touted not only as an indicator of the overall economy, but even the well-being of society. The categories of people you mention that shouldn't be counted... all of those people live in and have an effect on society. If we're worried about the economy, it seems like we would want to know how much of our population (not just job seekers) are working, and how many people depend on the system without employment. And if we're worried about aggregate well-being, a number that takes into account the massive prison population seems better. I'm not saying that the common unemployment rate is useless. Only that it's over-used, and used to answer questions it has no business answering. It feels like we're sweeping a lot under the rug and everyone is playing along.
  - ckcheng 7y ago
    > If we're worried about the economy, it seems like we would want to know how much of our population (not just job seekers) are working, and how many people depend on the system without employment. Is joblessness specific enough to answer how many people depend on the system without employment? I thought it includes, among other people, people who aren't job seeking because they are happily supported by their spouse, or people who are happily living off of savings, and not any other system, for example.
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    > The categories of people you mention that shouldn't be counted... all of those people live in and have an effect on society. Those people are counted. I'm not sure why you're flaming someone attempting to educate you about how they are counted. Hint: it takes more than one number, and, the government publishes more than one number.
amanaplanacanal 7y ago
I think the big problem is who do you count? Probably not children under 18, or the elderly (starting at what age?), and what about stay at home parents? Or do you survey people and ask them if they are not worrying, would they rather be working? And how do you count people in the gig economy? Or folks who used to have professional jobs but are now making do with a service job because they can't find something like what they had before? Counting unemployment is not straightforward.
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
There are 6 official measures of unemployment in the USA (see https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm), and most people get confused when presented the distinctions all of them. In general, the number that is reported on the most is U3, but U6 includes a lot of people stuck in part time employment when they really want full time.
throwaway_USD 7y ago
>The incentive for politicians to prop themselves up with the unemployment rate is clear. One of the funny things is when Trump ran in 2016 a big part of his campaign was acknowledging the fact that the unemployment numbers were a lie and being fudged. He made major promises, which I am sure appealed to a lot of people, he would shine a light on the unemployed workers who were not counted in the workforce...of course, then he got elected and began taking credit for the best unemployment numbers ever using the same accounting methods.

mperham 7y ago

There are actually six different "unemployment" metrics, each with different criteria about who counts. https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm

xyzzyz 7y ago

Of course the data exists. See eg. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25TTUSM156S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25TTUSM156S The issue people are talking about unemployment rate and not the joblessness rate is that people care about ability to get a job if you want one. The joblessness rate includes people who are looking for job but can’t get any, but also people who are supported by their spouses, retirees, and people living on government benefits who are not looking for job, because they are disabled, too busy with childcare, or care for other people needing it, or ultimately too lazy and having too little self-respect to stop living on charity of others. This wide aggregation makes it very difficult to understand what actually causes changes in it: are more people jobless because of expansion of disability benefits? Or maybe there was a surge of people retiring early? You need to look at other indicators to understand it. For example, good amount of growth of employment rate in recent years is a result of many people, who previously drew disability benefits to compensate them for their inability to work, actually going to work, once the work became better option than government check. For this reason, unemployment rate is a better metric to look at, because it tells you something more useful and has better signal to noise ratio.

ska 7y ago
> "For example, good amount of growth of employment rate in recent years is a result of many people, who previously drew disability benefits to compensate them for their inability to work, actually going to work, once the work became better option than government check." I've heard this before but have not seen good data on it, do you have cites?
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  I saw a good graph a while ago that matched growth in new workers with disability terminations, but this is pretty apparent when you look at the disability statistics themselves: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/dibStat.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/dibStat.html Number of people drawing disability benefits was rapidly growing at around 5% YoY up till 2011, then its growth slowed significantly, and around 2014 it started to slowly fall.
  - benmccann 7y ago
    Here's one chart I found showing the relationship between disability and unemployment statistics: http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/trimtabs-disability.png http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/trimta...
alexilliamson 7y ago
Sure I agree that the typically reported unemployment measure is best for measuring how easily people who want jobs can obtain them. However, so often this is touted not only as an indicator of the overall economy, but even the well-being of society. The categories of people you mention that shouldn't be counted... all of those people live in and have an effect on society. If we're worried about the economy, it seems like we would want to know how much of our population (not just job seekers) are working, and how many people depend on the system without employment. And if we're worried about aggregate well-being, a number that takes into account the massive prison population seems better. I'm not saying that the common unemployment rate is useless. Only that it's over-used, and used to answer questions it has no business answering. It feels like we're sweeping a lot under the rug and everyone is playing along.
- ckcheng 7y ago
  > If we're worried about the economy, it seems like we would want to know how much of our population (not just job seekers) are working, and how many people depend on the system without employment. Is joblessness specific enough to answer how many people depend on the system without employment? I thought it includes, among other people, people who aren't job seeking because they are happily supported by their spouse, or people who are happily living off of savings, and not any other system, for example.
- greglindahl 7y ago
  > The categories of people you mention that shouldn't be counted... all of those people live in and have an effect on society. Those people are counted. I'm not sure why you're flaming someone attempting to educate you about how they are counted. Hint: it takes more than one number, and, the government publishes more than one number.

amanaplanacanal 7y ago

I think the big problem is who do you count? Probably not children under 18, or the elderly (starting at what age?), and what about stay at home parents? Or do you survey people and ask them if they are not worrying, would they rather be working? And how do you count people in the gig economy? Or folks who used to have professional jobs but are now making do with a service job because they can't find something like what they had before? Counting unemployment is not straightforward.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

There are 6 official measures of unemployment in the USA (see https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm), and most people get confused when presented the distinctions all of them. In general, the number that is reported on the most is U3, but U6 includes a lot of people stuck in part time employment when they really want full time.

throwaway_USD 7y ago

>The incentive for politicians to prop themselves up with the unemployment rate is clear. One of the funny things is when Trump ran in 2016 a big part of his campaign was acknowledging the fact that the unemployment numbers were a lie and being fudged. He made major promises, which I am sure appealed to a lot of people, he would shine a light on the unemployed workers who were not counted in the workforce...of course, then he got elected and began taking credit for the best unemployment numbers ever using the same accounting methods.