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A comment on The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment. Parent comment

Re:The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment by nkozyra on Tuesday February 03, 2015 @01:58PM (#8992403)
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.

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Re:The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment by danielweber on Tuesday February 03, 2015 @02:12PM (#8992519)
> 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"

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Re:The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment by tsotha on Tuesday February 03, 2015 @09:35PM (#8994998)
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.
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Re:The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment by ikeboy on Tuesday February 03, 2015 @03:00PM (#8992896)
They probably make small methodology changes all the time.
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Re:The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment by nkozyra on Tuesday February 03, 2015 @03:18PM (#8993037)
They do, but they're published and very rarely are they significant.
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Re:The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment by Terr_ on Tuesday February 03, 2015 @02:11PM (#8992516)
I think it's the difference between "This is intrinsically misleading" versus "People who want to mislead you may use this when they try".
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Re:The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment by niels_olson on Tuesday February 03, 2015 @02:56PM (#8992866)
> This is intrinsically misleading

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.

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Re:The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment by Terr_ on Tuesday February 03, 2015 @06:19PM (#8994240)
> Exactly.

Wait... exactly what? I'm confused because the "quote" you're using from my post is (ironically?) deeply misleading.

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Re:The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment by niels_olson on Tuesday February 03, 2015 @09:16PM (#8994947)
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.

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Re:The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment by SixSigma on Wednesday February 04, 2015 @03:51AM (#8995918)
Isn't one of the points in the OP that the market itself has changed?
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Re:The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment by discardorama on Tuesday February 03, 2015 @03:22PM (#8993077)
> 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.

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