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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!mimsy!brillig.umd.edu!trish
From: trish@brillig.umd.edu (Tricia Jones)
Newsgroups: misc.kids,comp.edu,sci.med,misc.headlines
Subject: Re: U.S. Far Behind In Health Care, Education : Panel Finds
Summary: who determines unemployment
Keywords: Census Bureau
Message-ID: <17362@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 7 May 89 21:48:57 GMT
References: <1843@ccnysci.UUCP# <1303@optilink.UUCP> <784@aoa.UUCP> <17323@mimsy.UUCP>
Sender: nobody@mimsy.UUCP
Reply-To: trish@brillig.umd.edu.UUCP (Tricia Jones)
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science,
Lines: 40

In article <17323@mimsy.UUCP> sears@tove.umd.edu.UUCP (Andrew Sears) writes:
>In article <784@aoa.UUCP> carl@aoa.UUCP (Carl Witthoft) writes:
>>In article <1303@optilink.UUCP> cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
>>Maybe you oughtta take a look at the definition of unemployment. Those who
>>have given up registering @ the unemployment office are no longer counted.
>
>I think you may have the wrong definition too.  As far as I've heard, from
>Economics classes and text books, this is not the case.  There is supposed to 
>be some government agency that actually calls people to gather this information
>They ask questions like a) Are you currently working?  If you answer no to the 
>first question (actually they ask about working at least X hours a week), then
>they ask you b) Have you looked for work in the last N weeks?  
> ...
>					They are supposed to do this every
>so often with a 'representative' sample, and extrapolate to the actual numbers.
>

The government agency in question is the Census Bureau.  How do I
know?  We were part of the statistics at the beginning of the year!
Actually, everyone in our stairwell was (same street address).
I'm sure they use standard random sampling techniques.  

The first time you are included, they send out a census worker to
your humble home, who sits on your couch and asks you lots of fun
questions.  After that, they call you on the phone.  We were called
for 3 or 4 months; we will also be used as data sometime next year.

They had a hard time figuring out which slot to put me in : I'm on
a fellowship, so I get money, but I'm not required to "produce output",
like a regular teaching assistant or research assistant is.  (My husband
asked the woman who interviewed us if there was a category for free-loaders.)


Tricia Jones

+----------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| Tricia Jones                     | For all I know, these might not even |
| University of Maryland           | be MY opinions...  (my fingers have  |
| Department of Computer Science   | a mind of their own sometimes!)      |
+----------------------------------+--------------------------------------+