Does the Unemployment Number Reflect The Number of People Who Recieve Unemployment Benefits or....

[Corey_Baker08]

All people who do not have a job. I asked the question in LBN under a post about how thousands who have been recieving unemployment benefits from many different states will expire this week and I was wondering if these people will be included into the unemployment number or just kicked the curb and forgot about to reflect a smaller number of Unemployed?

Thanks for any responses and Like myself and my parents I know being unemployed if extremely difficult and to think that these people will have their benefits taken away completely is just sickening to me!

[CrazyLate]

1. It depends.

The most common unemployment number you read about is U3.

Wikipedia has a pretty article on it.

* U1: Percentage of labor force unemployed 15 weeks or longer.
* U2: Percentage of labor force who lost jobs or completed temporary work.
* U3: Official unemployment rate per ILO definition.
* U4: U3 + "discouraged workers", or those who have stopped looking for work because current economic conditions make them believe that no work is available for them.
* U5: U4 + other "marginally attached workers", or those who "would like" and are able to work, but have not looked for work recently.
* U6: U5 + Part time workers who want to work full time, but can not due to economic reasons.

U6 right now is around 13% IIRC. We just broke 7% ending in December for U3.

[AZ Criminal JD]

2. The unemployment number has nothing to do with benefits

The Dept. of Labor telephone polls families to determine who is working and who is not. They then throw the information into a statistical grinder and come up with the percentage.

[sandnsea]

3. This is correct n/t

[conscious evolution]

19. Thats an interesting factoid

I always figured it was based on the number of people filing for un-employment.

A number of posters are correct about one thing.They have been lieing with statistics for a while now in order to paint a roseier picture of the true numbers.

[avaistheone1]

20. Under the Bush admin if you only work a couple hours a week you are considered fully employed.

So are unemployment rate is actually much higher than the government states. It is probably more like 20%.

Pretty shocking, eh?

[endarkenment]

4. wiki says household survey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment

But this is a rather complicated statistical issue. The page is interesting.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. I think the number generally refers to those who are actively seeking

jobs. That includes everyone collecting unemployment and those who are still listed at the unemployment office as job hunting. A lot of people drop off the job hunter list once their unemployment runs out & are classified as "discouraged workers" and reclassified as no longer seeking employment and therefore not technically unemployed. One (cynical) reason for shortening the term of eligibility for unemployment compensation is that it automatically causes a drop in "unemployment--" a fact that has never been lost on Republicans.

[AlinPA]

13. That is how I understand it. Agree.

[Fearless]

6. No, and it also doesn't include those who have run through unemployment insurance and

those who are underemployed.

[MADem]

7. It does not reflect "discouraged workers"

Those whose benefits have run out, and they're getting by "however" and have given up trying to find a job.

You know, that cousin in the basement, who does odd jobs that keep him in beer and cigarettes and not much else; that relative in the attic who works under the table every so often at the bar down the street? Those guys...they're not on "the list."

[Corey_Baker08]

8. Thank-You To All That Responded!!!!!

What an interesting scenario, so nonethless the Dept of labor basically does polling just like presidential candidates to determine the number of unemployed, shheesh thats crazy!

[MADem]

9. It's bullshit, too. I've got four family members out of work.

No one's EVER called here.

We're in the book, too.

What a load of horseshit!

[Corey_Baker08]

10. Thats The Same way with my family...

and the other post made a good point how they dont even include those underemployed who work at jobs there overqualified to be working at....

[Igel]

11. No, it's not crazy.

Lot's of people don't qualify for unemployment benefits.

Some are looking for work and no longer receiving them.

Others quit, and aren't entitled to them, even if "quit" means "all but forced out". They're replaced, often by somebody receiving unemployment ... so it *looks* like the number of unemployed decreases by 1, if you just look at benefits, but looks are deceiving in this case.

Others were never employed, but are looking for work. Me, when I finished college.

Others were self-employed. You lose your contracts or your business goes belly-up, and you don't get unemployment. Been there, done that.

Now, some of these people are caught in payroll reports filed monthly, quarterly, or semi-annually. I used to file them, and it certainly gives the government an idea of turnover (and since they project from monthly filing to quarterly and half-year filings, it explains why they revise the numbers every couple of months). But payroll reports still don't catch the self-employed when they get work or lose work and workers new to the workforce--in other words, of the three times I've been unemployed, the payroll reports would have caught me once. For those you need the household survey.

Since it's a statistical thing, no, I've never been polled; I have to assume the sample is large enough that people like me are caught in their random sample in proportion to our presence in the workforce.

[Corey_Baker08]

12. Ahhhh IC thank you for this

you are very wise...

:hi: igil

[Jackpine Radical]

14. I think the point is that there is no single "unemployment number."

You have to know which number they're talking about in order to properly interpret what is being reported.

Here's the Forbes Investopedia on the topic:


Discouraged Worker
What Does Discouraged Worker Mean?

An economic term for a person who is eligible for employment and is able to work, but is currently unemployed and has not attempted to find employment in the last four weeks. Discouraged workers have usually given up on searching for a job because they found no suitable employment options and/or were met with lack of success when applying.

Investopedia explains Discouraged Worker...
Some discouraged workers, however, are voluntarily unemployed. Stay-at-home parents, for example, have chosen to not work in order to tend to their children and pursue other interests.

Since discouraged workers are no longer looking for employment, they are not counted as active in the labor force. This means that unemployment rates, which are based on labor force calculations, do not consider discouraged workers as unemployed.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. Yes, and the so-called "high unemployment" in Europe that the Reaganites

liked to point to was due to their officially released figures being closer to U6 than ours.

However, the news reports rarely go higher than U3.

I was unemployed during the Reagan recession, but I wasn't counted because I had just finished grad school and occasionally worked temp, after which I worked part-time AND temp.

[tritsofme]

17. You might find this interesting:

http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=key_workplace

Using BLS concepts, European UE rates have still generally been higher than the US numbers reported as U3.

[Azlady]

16. Yep, friends self employed

selling art, that of course is not selling business almost gone, and they do not qualify for unemployment nor any other services. They live in an artist community, many standing in food lines in the little village on Thursdays, what use to be 2-5 people are now about 40 people, they run out of food, not everyone gets food :0(

Artists are getting hurt so bad in this economy

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. That's why Roosevelt's WPA program hired artists to decorate public buildings

actors and musicians to put on traveling shows, and writers to write travel guides to all the (then) 48 states.

[Veruca Salt]

21. That sounds like a plan that should be repeated

have you sent that to change.gov?

I remember reading an article not long ago about a theater company dropping the price of their admissions drastically so that the public at large would be able to afford to go even with the economy in such a terrible state. I love attending the local theaters so that made me happy to see. It really does something for a persons state of mind too to see a play put on that way verses seeing a movie. :)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. I totally agree

When I get a windfall (as a self-employed person), I buy advance concert and theater tickets, so that I have something interesting to do, even if I'm broke at the time the event comes up.