alt.politics.economics

Video61@ wrote:

>
> sorry, it looks like i was one year off, it was 1982.
Nope. Nothing in the article to support that. Do you actually read all
the crap you cut and paste here? He does characterize the change the
same way you do, but it still looks like he was talking about the 1983
change.

The article I posted about that change said that the effect was about
.1%. That is true in times of "normal" unemployment. However, in 1983,
the unemployment was higher, so a proportional effect was larger in
absolute terms. In 1983, their were 10,717,000 unemployed, and
111,550,000 in the civilian labor force, so a % unemployment rate.
There were million in the military. Assuming all of them were
stationed in the US, that would increase the labor force to
113,750,000, and decrease the unemployment rate to %.

If one is looking for hobgoblins in this change, it might be more
productive to look at the changes in unemployment by age and race.
Seems to me that the figures including the military tell a truer
story, but the real key is to know which number you are looking at.


>just lightly
>skim this one over to. then ask me to help you with your education,
>not, do it yourself.

>
>The government reported that annual unemployment during this recession
>peaked at only around 6 percent, compared with more than 7 percent in
>1992 and more than 9 percent in 1982.
Well, the article does include the date 1982, but says nothing about
the change to show alternative values including the military occurring
in that year. I imagine that having the date and the event in the same
article means to you that they are tied together. Oh, wait, it also
says 1992. Maybe the change was made then. Oh, this is so confusing!!

>But the unemployment rate has
>been low only because government programs, especially Social Security
>disability, have effectively been buying people off the unemployment
>rolls and reclassifying them as ''not in the labor force.''
>
>In other words, the government has cooked the books. It has been a
>more subtle manipulation than the one during the Reagan
>administration, when people serving in the military were reclassified
>from ''not in the labor force'' to ''employed'' in order to reduce the
>unemployment rate. Nonetheless, the impact has been the same.

He does characterize the 1983 change the same way you do (except that
he is realistic enough not to think that the President, particularly
one as hand-off as Reagan, directly made or directed the change), but
I've seen nothing to support that characterization.

However, I did say:
:No. Feel free to show us that this is not a figment of your
:imagination. If so, I'll owe you. And unlike you, when I say that, I
:will be man enough to admit it if you show I am wrong.

And in fact, you showed me just that, so I was wrong. This was not a
figment of your imagination. Certainly not compelling support, but
neither was it made up out of whole cloth--I was wrong.
--
Alex -- Replace "nospam" with "mail" to reply by email. Checked infrequently.