The number will go down but the critics will say people just got discouraged and stopped looking.
I agree the numbers are always misleading. Why don’t we simply track employment?
Because the population is always growing. We can add 100,000 new jobs, but if 500,000 people enter the workforce, then the 100,000 new jobs are kind of pointless.
Nevertheless, the unemployment data is calculated from the employment data, and you can look at the employment data yourself.
There are two surveys conducted by the BLS to estimate how many jobs there are available. One is the payroll survey which asks companies how many jobs are available. This tends to overestimate the number of employed people because some people have multiple jobs. The other is the household survey, which polls people and asks how many are employed. This tends to be a little less accurate because the same size is smaller. At any rate, the houshold data is used for “the” unemployment number. A summary of the two methods is archived in Google.
So simply take the household survey employment number, subtract it out from your estimate of the workforce, and you’ve got the number of “unemployed”.
Are you asking why some people are excluded from the unemployment rate? For instance, if there’s 300 million people in the US, and there’s (made up figure) 200 filled million jobs, you’d say there’s a 33% unemployment rate? Even ignoring the possibility of some people having more than one job, there’s some problems with that.
I’ll try to avoid GD here, but… Should housewives (or husbands) be counted as unemployed? Retired people? People who are sick/disabled enough that they can’t hold a job? College students? Children?
Even if you exclude everyone under 18 and over 65 (or whatever retirement age you want), the idea is that including some categories of people would not provide meaningful data, because they’re not looking for work and its not just because they stopped looking. Stay at home parents are probably the classic example. You can quibble over the methods they use to include or exclude certain people from the rate, but I think the basic idea is non-controversial.
Amok is right. The only really meaningful figure is how many people without jobs actually want work and can’t get it. Arguably, the best way they have come up with to measure this number is the unemployment figure we use today. Sure there are some people who get discouraged but theremight be just as many who are satisfied to live off their government check and/or whatever they make in the underground economy.
I run a small business and I see it all of the time. You get people who think they want to work but within a couple of weeks or months they are glad to be back on the dole. They will augment their government checks by providing day care tp friends or selling illegal substances or doing whatever they are particularly suited to by disposition and opportunity. If they run into a shortfall they will seek temporary employment. Young women will often (and I know this will come as a shock to everyone) try to find a man to support them. In fairness men will sometimes do likewise.
Another thing that might unfairly drive the figure up is that there are a number of people who say they are looking for work who really aren’t. I have two brothers who are in this category. One has been looking for work for most of the fifty years he has been on this planet but has only rarely, for short periods of time been able to find one up to his standards. It would be interesting to see a figure on how many people have just opted out of working altogether.
The other thing to consider is workforce friction. At any one time around 5% or so of the workforce will be temporarily between jobs. They have either quit to look for better prospects or have been let go for one reason or another. That is why an unemployment rate of 5% is generally (and paradoxicaly) considered to be full employment.