Odd Query
 

Um.

Once I was told that the unemployment rate of the country of the United States of America is figured out by seeing how many people are currently collecting unemployment benefits, and subsequently those people and only those people count toward Unemployment %

As such, this meant that while people could be unemployed, they could not count as they weren't gaining unemployment.


Is there truth to this?

I think it's the same way over here. It may sound a little odd at first, but think about it - how else are you gonna determine it?

Not only that, but you have to weed out people who are "self-employed," which is pretty much the same thing, and almost always the same thing after a year.


See, it's assumed if they aren't collecting the benefits, they've found a way to make money on their own. Better than doling out government cash to people running hardware stores at a livable profit.

It does suck for teenagers though, if that's the case, since some of them could be unemployed, seeking work, but still living off of parents.

And it means that unless you're getting benefits, you don't exert pressure on the government to help with unemployment.

Well unemployed from what I see are those who once had a job but now don't have a job.
Those who have never had a job before in their life seem to actually be in a category of their own. Personally, I think that the United States should stop contemplating the fact that their is a rising unemployment rate, and actually act on it - i.e. giving people jobs, menial if need be, instead of throwing people out on the streets and making them suckle off of the government.

I think the children of the poor and unemployed make an excellent source of food.
JOHNATHAN SWIFT REFERENCE FTW!!!

The "Unemployment rate" statistic used by the US government is derived from a hopelessly complex formula that means next to nothing, and is constantly being tinkered with. For example, people who filed an unemployment claim within the last 15 weeks are counted as being "more" unemployed than people that have been unemployed for longer than that period who have not filed a new claim within that time period. In all actuality, the longer you are unemployed, the less of a problem it is considered. Instead, you only hear about "new unemployment claims," which are always reported when they go down regardless if any of the previous wave of claims even got jobs.

Currently, you are not counted as unemployed unless you report yourself as being so to the government, regardless of whether or you additionally apply for benefits. Sadly, the rate is not based on anything so simple as the numbers of actual people being unemployed or collecting benefits.

A friend of mine, who is a math/economics major specializing in statistics, tried to explain the current formula to me once but all I got out of the conversation was a headache.

Consequently, the unemployment rate means whatever the politicians in power at the moment want it to mean. In essence, we're always being told that its "good," whether or not its been going up or down.

DOn't forget that the United States categorizes people who haven't worked for 2 years as "unemployable" and thus takes them off the count of "unemployed." This is just one of the many ways the government plays with the numbers to make the economy look better than it is. Our TRUE unemployment is 8-11% at any one time, like most other post-industrial countries.

How do you arrive at that number?

You forget that to get any unemployment benefits you have to renew your claim every week, so yeah, claims that aren't renewed are of less value anyway.