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From: bitmap@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Unemployment rate statistic
Message-ID: <454@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 8-Apr-84 03:10:22 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbtopaz.454
Posted: Sun Apr  8 03:10:22 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Apr-84 05:17:46 EST
Organization: Univ. of Calif., Berkeley CA USA
Lines: 20

<....>
Today's paper gave the latest unemployment rate statistic:
7.8%, and near the end of the paper stated that the combined
military-civilian unemployment rate was 7.7%  .  The 7.8% figure is
the one that got all the headlines, and I'm fairly sure that this
has been true in past months.

Conclusions:  Although the new method of calculating the
unemployment was introduced a year or two ago, all the headline
figures have used the older method.  Thus, the statistic has,
for all practical purposes, been calculated consistently.
              The present difference in the method of calculating
unemployment is only 0.1%  .  It may have been higher in the past
(someone else on the net mentioned a 0.6% difference), but it
almost certainly has not been a difference of 1%, as someone's economics
professor apparently said.

Sam Hall
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