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Myth is an overly harsh label. When the headline unemployment rate is the only thing the vast majority of people hear about and what politicians boast about, i
by anonporridge 4y ago
Myth is an overly harsh label.
When the headline unemployment rate is the only thing the vast majority of people hear about and what politicians boast about, it's entirely reasonable to remind people that it's common to misunderstand what "unemployment rate" actually means.
Most people do think it's something closer in relation to labor participation rate.
- TheCoelacanth 4y agoThe different rates are all highly correlated, though, so it hardly even makes a difference when you are looking at a trend over time.
- mywittyname 4y agoRight, most of it is just report the U-3 rate because we've always reported the U-3 rate. You can infer the U-x rate by multiplying the U-3 by some fixed scaling factor (i.e., x1.9 for U-6). I feel like people love to call the the U-6 the "real" unemployment rate because it looks far worse than it actually is. But, in reality it doesn't matter if your preffered figure feel from 10% to 6% or from 17% to 10% over a time period.