Brent P wrote:
In article , krw wrote:

No, it's the number of people

looking_for_employment/employed+looking_for_employment

If you aren't seeking employment you are *NOT* counted as
unemployed. ...seems to make sense to me!

It's not that simple.

It is *exactly* that simple. If you're not already
employed OR actively seeking employment, then you're
not in the work force. It's that simple.


The formula is political and for instance does not
include people who have run out of unemployment benefits but are still
seeking employment.

That is ABSOLUTELY FALSE. Here, you ideologically
motivated and economics-ignorant liar, read this:

Some people think that to get these figures on
unemployment the Government uses the number of
persons filing claims for unemployment insurance
(UI) benefits under State or Federal Government
programs. But some people are still jobless when
their benefits run out, and many more are not
eligible at all or delay or never apply for
benefits. So, quite clearly, UI information cannot
be used as a source for complete information on the
number of unemployed.

Other people think that the Government counts every
unemployed person each month. To do this, every home
in the country would have to be contacted--just as
in the population census every 10 years. This
procedure would cost way too much and take far too
long. Besides, people would soon grow tired of
having a census taker come to their homes every
month, year after year, to ask about job-related
activities.

Because unemployment insurance records relate only
to persons who have applied for such benefits, and
since it is impractical to actually count every
unemployed person each month, the Government
conducts a monthly sample survey called the Current
Population Survey (CPS) to measure the extent of
unemployment in the country. The CPS has been
conducted in the United States every month since
1940 when it began as a Work Projects Administration
project. It has been expanded and modified several
times since then. As explained later, the CPS
estimates, beginning in 1994, reflect the results of
a major redesign of the survey.

There are about 60,000 households in the sample for
this survey. The sample is selected so as to be
representative of the entire population of the
United States. In order to select the sample, first,
the 3,141 counties and county-equivalent cities in
the country are grouped into 1,973 geographic areas.
The Bureau of the Census then designs and selects a
sample consisting of 754 of these geographic areas
to represent each State and the District of
Columbia. The sample is a State-based design and
reflects urban and rural areas, different types of
industrial and farming areas, and the major
geographic divisions of each State.

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm


So you are a LIAR.



It counts people who accepted jobs that pay a small
fraction of what they used to make because their unemployment ran out but
are still looking as employed.

Rightly so. Those people *are* employed.

Anyway, you don't have any idea how many people take a
job at "a fraction" of what they previously earned. It
isn't many.

Face the facts, Brent: You're trying to pretend that
there are many more unemployed than there really are,
and you simply are WRONG.