Unemployment Statistics

Back when I was in high school, I went to a meeting mostly of adults where there was the obligatory introduction session - what's your name, and "what do you do?", the two things that seem to most define us in modern America. One person, for his avocation, stated, "I'm in government statistics", a clever euphemism for "I'm unemployed". But given the changes of the past two decades, I'm not sure that his claim would still hold true.

In "The Unemployment Myth", the New York Times presents a brief history of the manipulation of unemployment statistics by this nation's political parties, and makes a brief but compelling argument for reforms which would make unemployment figures meaningful.

One thing the article doesn't mention is the exclusion of "discouraged workers" from unemployment statistics, although I think it is implicit that any meaningful reform would take them into account.

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