According to Kevin Phillips in the May 2008 HARPERS, "after the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961, when high jobless numbers marred [his administration's] image ... the new administration appointed a committee to weigh changes. The result, implemented a few years later, was that out of work Americans who had stopped looking for jobs ... were labeled "discouraged workers" and excluded from the ranks of the unemployed, where many, if not most, had been previously classified."
is this true? In any event, that reclassification has been applied to _all_ official estimates of unemployment, going back to when the numbers started. So what really counts to economists wasn't changed much. What's important is not levels of the unemployment rate but its changes. The exclusion of the "discouraged" from the official unemployment rate does smooth out its fluctuations a bit, but I haven't seen any research indicating that the trend is changed by this re-calculation. Anyway, it's as easy as pie to re-calculate the official rate, adding them back in. In fact, the BLS now provides about 6 different rates so we can pick and choose. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
