How Unemployment Rates are Calcuated (Chaparral: employment, statistics, design)

[Whatajoke]

Good info for everyone...it's not so clear-cut!
[url=http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm]How the Government Measures Unemployment[/url]

[Santa Fe]

Thanks for posting the link. The part that is relevant to the metro areas in New Mexico is this section:

"Estimates for the remainder of the substate labor market areas are produced through a building-block approach known as the "Handbook method." This procedure also uses data from several sources, including the CPS, the CES program, State UI systems, and the decennial census, to create estimates that are adjusted to the statewide measures of employment and unemployment. Below the labor market area level, estimates are prepared using disaggregation techniques based on inputs from the decennial census, annual population estimates, and current UI data."

They have to do it this way, because their gigantic national survey will not pick up enough people even in the ABQ LMA for a reliable sample. So they use a variety of sources including the census which is now nine years out-of-date. You can imagine how unreliable this data for a rapidly growing place like LC. All the reasons they give for using their survey for the national estimates are thus reasons why the the smaller LMA data is bad.

IMO they keep the handbook method deliberately obscure so that few people will realize how bad it is.

[mortimer]

How the Government Measures Unemployment
Repaired the link. I didn't change it at all, but it worked in my post.
Sometimes, the city-data url-parser doesn't seem to work right.

[Mike Horrell]

If I recall correctly, there are several different, completely official, BLS employment
statistics focusing on different aspects of employment / unemployment.

The unemployment rate most commonly quoted is "adjusted" in a number of ways
while there is another, largely unadjusted, rate that some believe to far more
accurately reflect true unemployment. I think something like C-1 and C-2 are
the designations.

I've just done a quick browse of the BLS site and I can't locate what I'm looking
for. I'm sure it's there, just described in such a way that I can't quickly locate it.

[Poncho_NM]

Originally Posted by mortimer

How the Government Measures Unemployment
Repaired the link. I didn't change it at all, but it worked in my post.
Sometimes, the city-data url-parser doesn't seem to work right.

It's working correctly.

That is a new user, the URL parser does not work until a certain period or number of posts. I don't remember the specifics.


Rich

[Chaparral]

Shadowstats offers some "alternate" measures of unemployment, inflation, etc. that some may find interesting (not necessarily broken down by state, however). As an example, Mr. Williams' site depicts what the unemployment stats would look like if we still used the methodology in place during the Clinton administration.

Take it for what you will, but interesting nonetheless.

Chap

[Mike Horrell]

Thanks, Chaparral!

The U-3 and U-6 rates were what I was thinking of in my post above.

The U-3 rate is the fully adjusted one throwing out the greatest number of
possibles while the U-6 is the most inclusive (but still adjusted) rate. I really
know nothing about the veracity of the SGS Alternate but it would be good to
remind ourselves that according to the FDR Presidential Library and Museum
unemployment in the Great Depression was officially no higher than around 25% ,
only a couple points higher than the SGS Alternate number.

Even allowing for serious under-reporting back then, the SGS Alternate figure
seems somewhat questionable.