Discussing Unemployment Rate and Job Loss on NPR

I am off to NPR to talk about how the various measures of employment — Birth Death adjustment, Unemployment rates, total Employment — have changed over the years.

This has been a pet peeve of mine for years.

A few charts and data sources follow . . .

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Birth Death Adjustment

via Jake at Econompic

U1- U7 (1995)

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Sources:
BLS introduces new range of alternative unemployment measures
John E. Bregger and Steven E. Haugen
October 1995, Vol. 118, No. 10
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1995/10/art3exc.htm

Table A-12. Alternative measures of labor underutilization
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm

BLS introduces new range of alternative unemployment measures (PDF)
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1995/10/art3full.pdf

Additional Reading:
Hard numbers: The economy is worse than you know
Kevin Phillips, Harper’s Magazine
Tampa Bay Times, Sunday, April 27, 2008
http://www.tampabay.com/news/article473596.ece

The 20-Hour Workweek
The unemployment rate seems low. That’s because it’s not counting all those underemployed workers.
Daniel Gross
Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2008, at 3:59 PM ET
http://www.slate.com/id/2202879/

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