Doug wrote
The jobs count comes from a survey of employers, and the unemployment rate froma survey of households, so they're not strictly comparable. But the reason the U rate declined is that the jobless dropped out of the labor force. The number of people classed as "not in the labor force" rose by 538,000.
-Is this procedure standard for every country? I Brazil we changed the calculation of unemployment and our jobless rate jumped to 11% from 7,5%. I don´t know what were exactly the changes made, but one aspect that were criticized in our methodology was that you´re mentioning (people who gave up searching for a job are withdrawn from the workforce)
Alexandre
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