Evolution of Unemployment Rate to a Distorted Value and Misrepresentation

[GHook93]

Regardless of what people say about the unemployment rate under Obama, the manipulation stated a while ago and well before Obama was anywhere near the government. The most drastic change to the unemployment rate that skewed the calculation into a meaningless number that politicians use to their advantage, was done under Clinton! Since this change the OFFICIAL unemployment rate is a farce. This bullshit value is used to project unemployment rate that distorts true picture and well under-values employment rates. I mean a so-called discourage worker who has not 'supposedly' looked for work in 30 days is removed from the calculation, which has a positive effect on the unemployment rate (hence has the equivalent of listing these unemployed workers are employed).


Brief History:
JFK - Coined the term discourage workers.
Nixon - Created the bullshit manipulation seasonally adjustment.
Reagan (the only legit change) - Classified members of the military as employed, which makes sense.
Clinton - Took the discouraged workers and removed them from the unemployment calculation.

[Report] | Numbers Racket, by Kevin Phillips | Harper's Magazine - Part 2
It was left to the Clinton Administration to implement these convoluted CPI measurements, which were reiterated in 1996 through a commission headed by Boskin and promoted by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. The Clintonites also extended the Pollyanna Creep of the nation’s employment figures. Although expunged from the ranks of the unemployed, discouraged workers had nevertheless been counted in the larger workforce. But in 1994, the Bureau of Labor Statistics redefined the workforce to include only that small percentage of the discouraged who had been seeking work for less than a year. The longer-term discouraged—some 4 million U.S. adults—fell out of the main monthly tally. Some now call them the “hidden unemployed.” For its last four years, the Clinton Administration also thinned the monthly household economic sampling by one sixth, from 60,000 to 50,000, and a disproportionate number of the dropped households were in the inner cities; the reduced sample (and a new adjustment formula) is believed to have reduced black unemployment estimates and eased worsening poverty figures.

Bush - continued this boneheaded unemployment rate to make his numbers look better than they are.

Obama - Naturally did also.

 

[pinqy]

Regardless of what people say about the unemployment rate under Obama, the manipulation stated a while ago and well before Obama was anywhere near the government. The most drastic change to the unemployment rate that skewed the calculation into a meaningless number that politicians use to their advantage, was done under Clinton! Since this change the OFFICIAL unemployment rate is a farce. This bullshit value is used to project unemployment rate that distorts true picture and well under-values employment rates. I mean a so-called discourage worker who has not 'supposedly' looked for work in 30 days is removed from the calculation, which has a positive effect on the unemployment rate (hence has the equivalent of listing these unemployed workers are employed).


Brief History:
JFK - Coined the term discourage workers.
Nixon - Created the bullshit manipulation seasonally adjustment.
Reagan (the only legit change) - Classified members of the military as employed, which makes sense.
Clinton - Took the discouraged workers and removed them from the unemployment calculation.



Bush - continued this boneheaded unemployment rate to make his numbers look better than they are.

Obama - Naturally did also.

Let's see. Definition of Unemployed from BLS in the August 1993 Employment and Earnings:

Unemployed persons are all civilians who had no employment during the survey week, were available for work, except for temporary illness, and had made specific efforts to find employment some time during the prior 4 weeks. Persons who were waiting to be recalled to a job from which they had been laid off or were waiting to report to a new job within 30 days need not be looking for work to be classified as unemployed.

Where do you see discouraged included as part of that definition? But let's go back further (because it was a random release that had the old definition of discouraged):
Employment Situation June 1976

Discouraged workers are persons who want work but are not looking for jobs because they believe they cannot find any. They do not meet the labor market test—that is, they are not engaged in active job search—and therefore are classified as not in the labor force. These data are published on a quarterly basis.

So discouraged were not removed, because they weren't included!
The definition of discouraged was radically changed in 1994, but since it wasn't any part of the Unemployment definition, it had no effect.

Oh, here's the post-1994 definition:

Unemployed persons. All persons who had no employment during the reference week, were available for work, except for temporary illness, and had made specific efforts to find employment some time during the 4-week period ending with the reference week. Persons who were waiting to be recalled to a job from which they had been laid off need not have been looking for work to be classified as unemployed.

There is actually a change from the 1993 definition. Can you spot it? It has nothing to do with discouraged.

 

[waltky]

So, like does that mean blacks are more likely to go shoppin' when dey should be job huntin'?...

BLS: Unemployed More Likely to Go Shopping on Average Day Than Look for Job
September 8, 2014 -- On the average day, an unemployed American is more likely to be shopping—for things other than groceries and gas---than to be looking for a new job, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Only 18.9 percent of Americans who were unemployed (in surveys conducted from 2009 through 2013) spent time in job search and interviewing activities on an average day, according to BLS. Yet 40.8 percent of the unemployed did some kind of shopping on the average day--either in a store, by telephone, or on the Internet. 22.5 percent of the unemployed, according to BLS, were shopping for items other than groceries, food and gas. The BLS conducts a study called the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) which tracks how Americans spend their time doing various activities during a given day. “The goal of the survey is to measure how people divide their time among life’s activities,” explains the BLS. “Individuals are randomly selected from subset of households that have completed their eighth and final month of interviews for the Current Population Survey (CPS). ATUS respondents are interviewed only one time about how they spent their time on the previous day, where they were, and whom they were with.”

The “unemployed” are defined as individuals who are jobless, available for work, and actively looking for a job. But the BLS data shows that looking for a job may not be the most time-consuming activity in the unemployed Americans average day. While only 18.9 percent of the unemployed said they spent time during the previous day in job-search and interviewing activities on an average day, the survey shows that when someone was looking for a job they spent an average of only 2.48 hours of the day doing so.

An unemployed person—on the average day—was more likely to spend time on shopping, sports and recreation, socializing and leisure, than they were searching for and interviewing for a new job, according to BLS. According to BLS, 96.7 percent of the unemployed spent time during the average day participating in “socializing, relaxing, and leisure” activities and spent, on average, 5.93 hours on those activities—or more than twice the number of hours they spent job searching. Only 71.9 percent of the unemployed washed, dressed and groomed themselves on the average day, according to BLS. That means that 28.1 percent of the unemployed did not wash, dress and groom themselves on the average day. Nearly all of the unemployed--99.9 percent--reported sleeping on an average day. On average, they dedicated 9.24 hours to that activity.

BLS Unemployed More Likely to Go Shopping on Average Day Than Look for Job CNS News

See also:

White Unemployment 5.3% -- Black Unemployment 11.4%
September 5, 2014 – While unemployment nationwide is 6.1%, the unemployment rate for black Americans at 11.4% is more than double the rate for white Americans, who have an unemployment rate of 5.3%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The unemployment rate for Latino Americans, at 7.5%, is also lower than the unemployment rate for blacks, the BLS data show. For black Americans, age 16 and older, seasonally adjusted, the unemployment rate between July and August stayed the same at 11.4%, and that is up from the 10.7% rate in June. The last time the black unemployment rate was 11.4% was more than 5 years ago, in October 2008. (It was at a low 7.6% in August 2007.)

For white Americans, 16 years and older, seasonally adjusted, the unemployment rate also stayed the same at 5.3% between July and August, which was the same as it was in June. Except for April 2013, which also saw a rate of 5.3%, the last time it was at that level was in July/August 2008.

For Latinos, 16 and older, seasonally adjusted, the 7.5% unemployment rate in August was down from 7.8% in July. It has not fallen below the 7% range since May 2008. According to the Census Bureau, whites make up 77.7% of the U.S. population; blacks comprise 13.2% of the population; and Hispanic or Latino make up 17.1% of the population.

White Unemployment 5.3 -- Black Unemployment 11.4 CNS News