About three weeks ago I wrote a short piece about the meaning of unemployment. First I'll state that it was by no means profound. And Second I'll correct a statement, the official government number comes from the Current Population Survey (CPS) conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) each month. For the full explanation you can read Where do the statistics come from? which is on the FAQ page for How the Government measures unemployment? But the simple answer is that they survey households from their sample every month for four months (to maintain consistency) to arrive at the familiar percentage rate we all hear in the news every month.
In the first post I also mentioned marginally employed. Here is the table from the BLS that tracks this figure, and as I mentioned it is higher (at close to 16%.) I can report that I have not found much to corroborate the higher number I mentioned of 22%. But the BLS does explain in the FAQ that the sampling, while very meticulous, can be off by small amounts. This should not however result in a 6% point difference.
So what does it all mean? Obviously too many Americans are out of work, but how does that change? Well part of the answer seems to be training. Over at Business Ramblings my friend Jerry is writing about the issue. Who's responsibility should it be to help get the chronically unemployed back on their feet?
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