On Oct 24, 2008, at 4:25 PM, Martin Hart-Landsberg wrote:
I am hoping that someone can help with a question about
unemployment. Many years ago I read a study which talked about the
relationship between the yearly unemployment rate and the number of
people who experience unemployment during a year. If I remember
correctly the study said that you could multiply the yearly
unemployment rate by 2.2 to get the percentage of the labor force
that experiences unemployment at some time in that year. The
problem is that I don’t trust my memory, and that relationship was
drawn from a particular historical period.
The BLS publishes an annual survey of the experience of employment and
unemployment over the course of a year. The latest data is for 2006:
<http://www.bls.gov/news.release/History/work.txt>.
That year, 9.1% of the labor force experience some spell of
unemployment, and the average unemployment rate for the year was 4.6%.
So your rule of thumb is still in effect.
Doug
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