Yes, it's like people think they've stumbled upon something novel by "exposing" the definition of the U3, which has been in place and largely unchanged for a long time.
It would be equally "misleading" to just say 11% of people are unemployed by using the U6. There's nuance to these numbers.
This article calls the official unemployment rate "misleading." That's moronic. It's explicitly detailed and if you prefer to use a different metric, do so. The value of the # is not the specific percentage itself, it's the trend. Follow any trend you like, they've all had a similar trajectory the last few years.
> Yes, it's like people think they've stumbled upon something novel by "exposing" the definition of the U3
For literally every President for the past 25 years, I've had someone breathlessly tell me "they just changed the way they calculate the unemployment rate so it doesn't look so bad!!!!!11"
Well, some of them were right. That has less to do with U3/U6 than it does the way data is gathered and the birth/death model they use. Actually trying to figure out how many people have full time jobs isn't a trivial task, and it's very much open to manipulation.
Exactly. Reporting the same number over time sounds very serious and correct, unless the nature of the market itself is what changed. In which case the reporting may totally miss the real event worth reporting. That said, the conversation here is rich in part because at least people are aware that the underlying market may have changed.
Reporting U3, or any other number, as "the unemployment rate" is intrinsically misleading if the underlying reality has changed. The system under discussion is not a physical system that we are discovering, it's an economic system that we are constantly manipulating. Frequently, the system is manipulated specifically to push one number or another in a politically desirable direction. This makes the reporting of any given number potentially "intrinsically misleading".
By contrast "People who want to mislead you" may try to use this number, but even their attempts are undermined by changes in the underlying dynamics.
> It would be equally "misleading" to just say 11% of people are unemployed by using the U6. There's nuance to these numbers.
How about those on SSDI? Are they included in any of the numbers? My neighbor used to work as a landscaper, but now collects SSDI while doing odd (cash) jobs here and there.
It would be equally "misleading" to just say 11% of people are unemployed by using the U6. There's nuance to these numbers.
This article calls the official unemployment rate "misleading." That's moronic. It's explicitly detailed and if you prefer to use a different metric, do so. The value of the # is not the specific percentage itself, it's the trend. Follow any trend you like, they've all had a similar trajectory the last few years.