The bogus unemployment numbers

[bilby]

Well back in the day when I did cash-in-hand work for small sums that I didn't declare for tax purposes, I sure as shit wasn't about to rat on myself to some guy with a clipboard, no matter how much he promised to keep the survey results anonymised or confidential.

The first rule of lawbreaking is 'Don't tell anyone who doesn't need to know that you are doing it'.

You just did pal.

I figured someone would say that. But you may want to review my use of past and present tenses.

I wouldn't dispute that numbers derived from surveys can be bogus, though it does seem an odd point to make in defense of the accuracy of the numbers.

I am not defending the accuracy of anything. I assume that all survey results are deeply flawed - people love to confabulate, and they care far more about the opinions others hold of them than they do about reporting facts.

This goes double for activities that are illegal, or that have any potential at all for embarrassment.

I would be prepared to bet that the biggest influence on survey answers is not a function of the correct or true answer to the question asked, but is rather a complex function of the interviewee's guess at what the interviewer expects to hear, modified by the interviewer's perceived sexual attractiveness and/or social standing.

If asked 'Did you perform any paid work in the last fortnight', the first thought of most respondents is not 'Was that cash-in-hand job last week, or the week before?'; and it is not 'Should I admit to that job I didn't declare?'. It is 'What answer will impress/shock/wind-up the interviewer the most?'.

Any relationship between their answer and the truth is purely coincidental.

 

[Metaphor]

If asked 'Did you perform any paid work in the last fortnight', the first thought of most respondents is not 'Was that cash-in-hand job last week, or the week before?'; and it is not 'Should I admit to that job I didn't declare?'. It is 'What answer will impress/shock/wind-up the interviewer the most?'.

Any relationship between their answer and the truth is purely coincidental.

You're projecting, bilby, and you're also wrong. If people did nothing but lie on surveys, personal interview survey data would not correspond with parallel estimates gleaned from administrative data or business survey data -- yet they do, even for jealously guarded data like income.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I would consider myself unemployed. If there's no reasonable expectation of more of it next week it isn't a job to me.

The IRS doesn't consider it a job, either--there's a threshold below which you don't report odd job income. (IIRC $600/yr.)

Well, I would agree that the mass media does a pretty crappy job, but the BLS does a pretty decent job breaking down the numbers for those that want more than sound bites. Table A-15, U-6 provides the "Total unemployed, pus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force"; which happens to be 11.2% now.

IMPOV, we will know when the unemployment rate is low, when there is steady hourly wage pressure....

Yeah, U-6 is a pretty good measure of the real situation.

It just didn't occur to me that the occasional odd job made someone not "unemployed" by U-3 standards.

 

[fromderinside]

... if one doesn't like that definition, the (US) report releases data with 5 other definitions for 6 in total.

It would be nice if peope provided context once in a while.
To wit: How the Government Measures Unemployment http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#concepts

Are the definitions to which you refer actuall different definitions of employment or are they just categories of employment like

Individuals also are counted as employed if they have a job at which they did not work during the survey week, whether they were paid or not, because they were:

• On vacation
• Ill
• Experiencing child care problems
• On maternity or paternity leave
• Taking care of some other family or personal obligation
• Involved in a labor dispute
• Prevented from working by bad weather

The document is a nice general read on how employment sausage is made.

 

[laughing dog]

Well, I would agree that the mass media does a pretty crappy job, but the BLS does a pretty decent job breaking down the numbers for those that want more than sound bites. Table A-15, U-6 provides the "Total unemployed, pus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force"; which happens to be 11.2% now.

IMPOV, we will know when the unemployment rate is low, when there is steady hourly wage pressure....

Yeah, U-6 is a pretty good measure of the real situation.

It just didn't occur to me that the occasional odd job made someone not "unemployed" by U-3 standards.

So how does your lack of knowledge about BLS methodology on unemployment statistics make them "bogus"?

 

[funinspace]

Well, I would agree that the mass media does a pretty crappy job, but the BLS does a pretty decent job breaking down the numbers for those that want more than sound bites. Table A-15, U-6 provides the "Total unemployed, pus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force"; which happens to be 11.2% now.

IMPOV, we will know when the unemployment rate is low, when there is steady hourly wage pressure....

Yeah, U-6 is a pretty good measure of the real situation.

It just didn't occur to me that the occasional odd job made someone not "unemployed" by U-3 standards.

Well, only if Joe sixpack is silly enough to report it. And as laughing dog also implied, the "bogus" thing of the title seems to be overblown…In fact the CEO seems to be more of a blowhard as this is far more a media issue that he is part of, than a government reporting issue.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I heard Fox News just cost the economy 1 job as they fired their only Fact Checker. They noted in the press release that the release was due to position redundancy.