Comments on: Unemployment Rate Reports Are Not What You Think They Are

By: Trint

Trint — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:38:04 +0000

My wife, Tammy, is one of those rehired employees. Her entire department (13 women) was let go. Tammy was informed that the company was creating a new position to keep her on. Different place in the org chart, different (more) pay, and different (more) responsibility. So even though the news would say she lost her job, she actually got a promotion.

She was hired higher. (*wink* See paragraph 2 of your post.)

By: Randy Peterman

Randy Peterman — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:37:42 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Joe. I’ll check out your article ASAP. One of my problems with a broken metric is that it doesn’t help do anything but propagate bad information.

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:26:17 +0000

Great point about the gaps in the measure. I hear people all the time point out how the Unemployment rate can’t be trusted because it is skewed or doesn’t take into account people like your friend, but as long as it is calculated the same way, year over year then it is still a valuable metric. In fact, there are many situations and types of unemployment that simply cannot be measured, and so this may be as good as it gets for measuring unemployment.

I highlight a few such categories of employment as well as unemployment here: http://simpledebtfreefinance.com/5-types-of-employment/

I never knew so many existed!