Why the unemployment rate could be 5 percentage points higher
The U.S. economy lost a never-before-seen 20.5 million payrolls in April, bringing the unemployment rate to 14.7%.
But the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the unemployment rate is likely higher than the official numbers it released because of how the household survey interviewers counted.
“The plunge in payrolls ought to have lifted the unemployment rate to almost 20%, other things equal,” wrote Pantheon’s chief economist Ian Shepherdson in a note Friday.
For the past two months, the BLS instructed household survey interviewers to ask questions in a slightly different way to account for the unique situations borne out of the coronavirus crisis.
People not working because of coronavirus were supposed to be classified as “unemployed on temporary layoff.”
“However, it is apparent that not all such workers were so classified,” the BLS wrote in the release.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-the-unemployment-rate-could-be-5-percentage-points-higher-135352226.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
running about 22.8 million IIRC.
especially with the reported UI rate at 14.7%, which everybody knows is an undercounting of actual people "out of work."
