Statistics: How They Figure

The U.S. last week saw some of the most welcome statistics in many months: unemployment sank to an eight-year low of 4.5% in July and employment set a new record of nearly 75 million. With the number of jobless at the lowest level since booming October 1957, the most favorable indication of all was the statistic on teenagers, the center of the unemployment problem. Contrary to all expectations, the proportion of idle teen-agers fell from 14.1% in June to 13.2% in July. More than 1,600,000 of them found jobs, 50% more than the Labor Department expected, during the normal seasonal rise that brings thousands of them into supermarkets, playgrounds, offices and summer resorts.

The teen-age unemployment rate is "still far too high," said Lyndon Johnson—but the improvement indicated that the long-feared crisis in teen-age unemployment has not yet developed. Looking more broadly over the nation, the President also let it be known that he "was particularly pleased by the progress of the economy in the vacation or summer months." There were other statistics on hand to illustrate that progress: retail sales up 8% from a year ago, construction spending up 4% .

Feeding Confidence. Last week's announcements were a continuation of the steady flow of weekly and monthly Government statistics that has helped to keep the current economic advance going, bolstering confidence and thus promoting decisions by industry that reinforce the trend. Each year the U.S. Government spends an average of $150 million to produce some 4,500 daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual statistical reports about the nation's economy, covering everything from the annual production of infants' anklets to the yield per acre of peanuts picked in Georgia. Though there is an argument about the accuracy and completeness of some of them, everyone agrees that the figures are carefully watched by businessmen for clues to help them make business decisions.

Aware of the criticism, the Government is making what even its critics admit is consistent, if unspectacular, efforts to improve the data. Retail sales figures, once just totals, now show what kinds of merchandise are selling and where, and figures on personal income have been broken down into 100 metropolitan areas as well as by states. Later this month the biggest figure of all, the gross national product, will get a long-awaited and thorough overhauling to make it more accurate and more timely.

Keep On the Lights. Businessmen often complain that to obtain the raw materials for these statistics the Government inundates them with federal questionnaires, and Lyndon Johnson, heedful of their pleas despite his own love for statistics, has cut out 13% of the 5,192 types of report the Government once asked of various taxpayers. Most businessmen, however, find federal statistics vital in an era when rising competition and costs are shrinking the margin for error. "If the Government's economic statistics were eliminated," says Economist Conrad Jamison of Los Angeles' Security First National Bank, "it would be like turning out the lights."