On 1/20/06, Sandwichman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Oh wait. Maybe Doug was under the impression that I was suggesting that the > system of accounts was *designed* to be deceptive. Not at all. The accounts > are deceptive because they are gamed by everyone from corporations to > legislators. It's not a question of conniving statisticians at the BLS > pulling unemployment numbers out of their asses (a perennial Henwood straw) > but of the "actual" numbers not meaning the same thing in different > circumstances so that, as Bluestone and Sharpe point out, the unemployment > rate "is no longer an adequate measure of labor market capacity, economic > performance, or social well-being" (2004, "Construction of a New > Architecture for Labour Market Statistics.").
Alan Greenspan agrees that, as currently measured, the unemployment rate doesn't mean what it used to, so that 4% unemployment now might be the equivalent of 5% 25 years ago. Jim Devine "The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side." -- James Baldwin
