Comments on: Two sets of books

By: Jim Miller

Jim Miller — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 02:45:28 +0000

Well, I glanced at the technical paper the BLS put out on the problem and concluded that they were genuinely confused on the subject. The two numbers have been diverging for about 10 years now and the obvious adjustments, which used to work fairly well, don’t seem to anymore. The difference between the two totals is quite extraordinary by now, 8 million or something like that. I suppose that people could be more prone to lie to the interviewers now than a decade ago, I can’t say that the idea seems very plausible.

By: booth

booth — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 15:45:25 +0000

If someone calls a house, and an unemployed person answers, how likely will that person tell the truth about employment? You can imagine an unemployed person having trouble with bills, and worried that this “pollster” is some kind of front for a billing company.

By: MDtoMN

MDtoMN — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 18:12:29 +0000

Also, Brad Delong is always posting the % of the working age population actually working graph, and recently the number has gone down. From 66% to 60%, meaning that a large number of people have left the workforce, even if they’re not technically “unemployed”, because they usually aren’t looking for work – they’re having babies or getting educated, discouraged, etc. Another interesting place to look at for a feeling of the unemployment situation for young professionals – go to lsac – the group that runs the LSAT. They have numbers for how many people took it each year over the last decade or so. In the early 90s the number was about 150,000. Then it dipped steadily almost to 100,000 during the Clinton years. Recently it has gone back up and is hovering around 150,000. So, it appears that Young Professional types are leaving the labor market to get educated and find work, who would have been working in a better labor market.