>The UK employment figures are a joke, no? Didn't Thatcher change the
>definition something like 30 times to make them look lower? They're based
>on benefit registrations and not a household survey, right?
>
>Doug
Didn't the Reagan Administration do something like that here, too? If I understand correctly, the US unemployment rate is simply the number of people who actually seeking/receiving unemployment benefits or assistance. It doesn't count people who never filed for unemployment, or have given up, or are under-employed, etc. So homeless people are not counted as unemployed if they are not regularly reporting to their local unemployment office. Also there is the matter of the approximately 1.7 million people in prisons and local jails -- I wonder what impact it would have on the official unemployment rate if they were counted.