Unemployment rates statistical flaws - Essay Example

College: Unemployment Rates Statistical Flaws John Williams debunks the political rhetoric that the government has succeeded in creating employment opportunities by increasing part time jobs. Williams unearths the various government statistics and notes that the statistics have been manipulated for political expediency, and do not reflect the actual situation in the market. Though the government has reported on a very low unemployment rate, Williams’s implication is that the real unemployment rate was much higher than the reported ones when statistical factors come into the light, meaning the low figures are for political expediency only.

Williams implies that the recent statistics where the Bureau of labor statistics indicated a drop in unemployment rates had no meaning in statistics and was only good for misleading the perception of the public. Williams maintains that the economy has been stagnant despite increasing figures and numbers published by the labor body. According to Williams, unemployment proportions have eased off from their highest levels because of the recent surge in hiring employees. On the contrary, the rates have dropped as a result of a high number of discouraged workers that are continuously eliminated from labor-force accounting.

Williams debunks several levels of unemployment, although only one of the unemployment levels seems to capture headlines in the news. For example, Williams explains about the Long-term discouraged workers, a group of employees, which BLS struck out in 1994 during Clinton’s presidency from the list of state unemployment measures. The headline numbers in these types unemployment seem to be hidden from the public, with the media playing a huge role in stressing on a single headline and ignoring the rest.

For example, the numbers of employment as carried in media headlines and other political statistics do not take care of the discouraged workers, a class of workers who have lost interest in looking for employment in the past four weeks. The motivation behind the loss of interest is that this group of workers has a firm belief that no work is available in the market, and any further job search would be discouraging (BKD, LLP). Williams notes that the standard nonprofessionals cannot decipher the real meaning of the statistics as given by the bureau of Labor Statistics.

One of the classes that statisticians and the press ignore according to William is the U6 unemployment class, which is the biggest class of unemployment in the country. The class comprises the underemployed, those marginally, employed and those with part time jobs, but do hope for fulltime employment. In addition, the group includes the short-term discouraged workers who have lost interest in looking for any jobs in the past one year, with a firm belief that no jobs are available in the market.

Williams observed that since 1994, the government has ensured that those who have lost interest in job search, in the last one-year, and the group of long-term discouraged workers do not make part of any government statistics in unemployment, which makes the announced unemployment rates deceptive and a political tool. As a result, the BLS reported that the adjusted headline unemployment rate in the previous month was about 7.4%, although BLS affirmed that the broader U6 adjusted unemployment rate was more than 14%.

Williams concludes that if monthly reports are of any significance, the economy could not be said to be recovering. On the contrary, the rate of unemployment was nearing a record high, higher than any other recorded unemployment rate in post-depression period (BKD, LLP). In order to achieve the real unemployment rate, Williams suggests that one has to add the BLS U6 figures to the long-term discouraged workers, a class of workers that has not looked for any employment opportunity in the past one year, although considering themselves as unemployed.

As Williams concludes, one has to be diligent and detailed in investigating and understanding BLS figures when capturing the real economic situation on the ground. The BLS rate of unemployment commonly reported has remained on the lower side considering that not all the discouraged employees are part of the statistics. Moreover, as the class of unemployed people become discouraged and join the long-term discouraged class of unemployed people, they are removed from the headline labor force statistics.

However, these workers remain in the economy ready to take on any work whenever an opportunity resurfaces. They are unemployed class of people, but the government’s flawed reporting on unemployment has relegated them to the backstage, ignoring them in entirety. This implies that the seasonally reported rates as released by BLS do not offer the actual picture of unemployment in the U.S, but seek to serve a political purpose in portraying the success of the government in fighting with unemployment.

Today, only a few of hopeful job seekers are employed full-time, with most of the job seekers in part-time employment but hopeful to find full time employment. Work Cited BKD, LLP. “Accurately measuring employment -- John Williams.” YouTube. 2012.Web. 7 Oct. 2013