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Originally Posted by Yakk
I thought you get cash if you claim you are still looking for work when you are on UI, and don't if you don't claim you are looking for work.
Don't UI programs in the USA require that you be looking for work?
Really, if you called someone and they said they had a job working for the government, they wouldn't be counted as employed or unemployed?
Wouldn't that make outsourcing of government work a zero-sum artificial way to decrease unemployment? (only slightly -- adding 1 employed person without taking away an unemployed person would decrease the % of unemployed)
I really doubt that this is true. . . Even the poverty line thing.
Oh yes, and as an aside: "Poverty" as is reported in the popular press in the USA is a relative-income measure, calling it poverty is a misnomer. If someone gets richer, it can cause other people to suddenly become poor.
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Fortunately for me, I don't have to waste too much time pitting my opinion against yours since each of what I stated is available to the public directly from the US government. The next time you have a question or are confused about an aspect of how my government operates, feel free to peruse the websites it maintains. None of its methodology or definitions are secret. I was just giving you some more information since you seemed to pose your position as unsure, so I don't quite get the cynical or doubtful tone you take in your responses. I wasn't writing a thesis, so I wasn't particularly precise. I don't know what a government worker might tell you his or her status was, but that doesn't preclude the government pollsters from classifying him or her in some other fashion. However, not
all government workers are excluded from the civilian workforce, or the page (last updated 4 years ago, is outdated information which is entirely possible).
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What is the CES definition of employment?
Employment, except for national federal government estimates, is the total number of persons on establishment payrolls employed full or part time who received pay for any part of the pay period which includes the 12th day of the month. Temporary and intermittent employees are included, as are any workers who are on paid sick leave, paid holiday, or who work during only part of the specified pay period. A striking worker who only works a small portion of the survey period and is paid would be included as employed under the CES definitions. Persons on the payroll of more than one establishment are counted in each establishment. Data exclude proprietors, self-employed, unpaid family or volunteer workers, farm workers, and domestic workers. Persons on layoff the entire pay period, on leave without pay, on strike for the entire period, or who have not yet reported for work are not counted as employed. Government employment covers only civilian workers.
Federal government employment represents the number of persons who were employed during the last full pay period of the month. This data is provided by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Federal government statistics are for civilian U.S. workers only. Overseas installations are excluded from the CES survey, as are all military personnel. In addition, the following agencies are excluded: the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
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Business.gov
You can also look at the explanation of how the government measures unemployment directly from the
U.S. Department of Labor
Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Both sources state as clear as possible that seasonal workers and people who don't make above the poverty line do not get counted as unemployed. Why would this be important? Well, employment figures are supposed to illustrate the strenght of our economy. If people are sliding out of the unemployment figures as a function of securing non-livable wages, working 12 hours per week instead of 40, or just quite looking from fatigue or despair, the resulting decrease in unemployment is by no means accurately portrayed as a recovery.
Your analysis of how relative poverty is figured is flawed. Relative poverty is determined by taking half of the median income. Median measures are resistant to outliers. The median income does not fluctuate because one person at the top suddenly makes a billion extra dollars. If anything, relative poverty
underestimates poverty (for much of the same reasons I outlined earlier in our estimation of the unemployed) and that's one of the reasons we use it here, versus absolute poverty as reported in the rest of the Western nations.
Like I said, however, I was just trying to be helpful to you. Please do your research instead of bickering with me. I don't come into these forums very often usually as a consequence of what I perceive to be one-up-manship mentality. What I saw was someone from another country making an attempt to understand a complicated issue in how my country calculates unemployment and poverty levels, initially stating that the basis of his points were shaky. Then respond to my clarification with, I doubt this to be so and I doubt that, too. So doubt all you want, I suppose, but such responses obviously don't compel me to lend you some clarification in the future.