Dean,

Just from the preview alone this seems to be a standard WSJ piece on the necessity of more immigration.

I think your headline for this piece is also wrong. You basically admit he is correct but that he should have explained that differences in methods mean that the unemployment would be the equivalent of 8.2% in US unemployment.

As for unemployment among college grads being squared with a skills shortage; maybe a lot of them major in things like sociology. College is no guarantee of useful skills :)

A reporter's job is communicate information in a meaningful way to readers. Not 1 in 100 readers of the WSJ knows that the article was referring to a measure of unemployment that uses a different methodology than we use in the United States. That means the reporter did not accurately communicate information.

Claiming that the unemployment number is correct because it referred to the German measure would be like posting an article that said Germany was hit by record heat wave, with the temperatures hitting 40 degrees, without ever mentioning that this was using a centigrade scale. That would be really bad reporting, just like when a reporter fails to indicate that the methodology for measuring unemployment is different.

8%... 10%...

still "skyrocketing uemployment" right?

Economists like Krugman have gone apeshit over 5% in the U.S.

At the end of Q4 2004, for male 25-54, standardized unemployment as measured by OECD was 4.6% in the USA and 7.4% in France.

For the same group, employment:population ratio was 86.3% in the USA and ... 86.7% in France.

60% higher unemployment, and more people working?

Right.

The real fraud, which is not mentionned by Dean Baker here, is economist and journalist using the unemployment number (standardized or not) to deliver a message to their audience on the job market.

It's simple: the unemployment number is totally meaningless to describe the job market.

Period.

The only thing it measures is the government efficiency to transform the "unemployed" (but part of the "active" population) into inactive (thus no longer part of the active population).

It's no wonder that theories based on the unemployment number do not work correctly these days, as Dean recently mentionned predicted inflation overheating with less than 5% unemployment has not been happening.

So far, not one economist I know has made the obvious connection.

Dean, what is your take on the unemployment number?

Laurent,

you are absolutely on the mark. In fact, many labor economists and increasingly macroeconomists are now arguing that the employment rate is the better measure since "unemployment," the state of not working, but actively looking for work, is ill-defined.

As I noted before, using employment to population rations (EPOPS), the U.S. does not look better than old Europe, at least for prime age workers [http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_content&task;=view&id;=75&Itemid;=8].

I should also point out that the U.S. data likely overstates EPOPs by 1.0-2.0 percentage points because people who are not employed are less likely to answer the survey [http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_content&task;=view&id;=72&Itemid;=8].

I give the media a bit more slack on using EPOPs as opposed to unemployment rates, because the switch in emphasis among economists is relatively new. On the other hand, there is no excuse for misrepresented a statistic, as the media does when it fails to note that the German unemployment rate is calculated with a different methodology.

Dean,

Thanks for these posts explaining, IN DETAIL, the US media's slight of hand in regard the Unemployment rate, since Reagan the US has mis-informed it's citizens.

I agree with you and Laurent, that it would be harder to lie about the employment rate and that it makes for a more informative comparison between nations...or course the US media would not want that...it would expose their decades long fraud.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

East Germany was assimilated into West Germany's economy with all the benefits of retirement, social services, AND East Germany's debt at the same time as the Euro came into activation with ZERO assets. The German Mark was nearly halved by the introduction of the Euro. It is truly amazing that Germany has acquired peoples from all over Africa and South Asia and still remains viable.

And the US continues to cry "foul" by the presence of 20 million illegal aliens from Mexico and Latin America who pick our crops and nanny our children for unreported wages.

With respect to the population to employment ratio- that could be messed up by different age distributions.

Correcting by only looking at prime age groups (what is this BTW?) could be messed up by different proportions of women working at any given time (e.g. fewer women having babies may lead to more women in the workforce).

Also, does the population include everyone, even undocumented aliens? If so, does the employment figure also include everyone?

Dean, thanks!

Erik L, yes as I did you have to look at age (and sex) group for EPOP.

For example, when people use "EPOP" it's generally for age 16-64 and often the tone will imply that higher is better.

But think about it: is 100% of the 16-24 population at work efficient? What about school? Here we go again... We should not replace unemployment just by EPOP (at least not 16-64).

My prefered measure for comparison and general state of the market is 25-64 men, with a look at part-time/full-time (or better distribution per working hour) .

But it's hard to get those statistics, for example part/full time per sex/age range is not available from eurostat or OECD unless I missed something.

Help welcomed.

(One last point: EPOP is often not with full population, but with some removed for I don't know what reason...).

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