HOW MANY U.S. JOBLESS? Confused Figures Lead to Confused Decision

HOW MANY U.S. JOBLESS?

HOW high is U.S. unemployment and how fast is it rising? The answer is of vital importance to the U.S. because a continued rise in unemployment would call for a radical change in Administration plans for taxes and spending. Yet the answers from the Administration's statisticians are more confusing than enlightening; their last estimates of unemployment (for January) ranged from 2,359,000 to 3,087,000, a difference of 728,000. Not one knows which figure to believe, and last week Commerce Secretary Sinclair Weeks was so disturbed that he had a panel of experts checking over the accuracy of the whole statistical system.

The trouble is that the Government uses three basic methods to chart the ebb and flow of U.S. unemployment, and all three need improvement. All are limited surveys and wide open to errors of interpretation. Of the three, the most important—and most controversial—is the Census Bureau's total count of the U.S. labor force (currently about 62 million over the age of 14). The bureau first checks a tiny, carefully chosen sample of the U.S., only 25,000 households in 68 key areas. Then it mathematically projects the figures on the size of the labor force—and the jobless—to cover the 45 million households spread out across the nation. To the layman, the sample seems woefully small. Even the slightest mistake is multiplied 1,800 times. Yet statisticians claim they can get accurate results, and point to the 1950 census, which showed a difference of only a few thousand in unemployment totals based on a 3⅓% sample, a 20% sample and a complete count.

That a sampling system is open to big error is apparent from the huge, 728,000-worker difference between the Census Bureau's two figures for January. That month, the Census Bureau tried a new system by increasing its sampling from 68 to 230 communities. It hoped for greater geographical representation, and it wanted to include new industries, e.g., electronics, which have grown up since the war. Since one of the two sampling systems must be wrong, most experts vote for the new system and the 3,087,000 figure. They argue that accuracy should increase through a greater geographical spread.

But the census figures, even if accurate, would not necessarily tell the whole story on unemployment. The very definition of "unemployment" is a problem. Census takers ask a series of carefully phrased questions to find out if a man worked at all during the week, was temporarily laid off, was either looking or not looking for a job. Only those out of work and actually looking for jobs are counted as unemployed. Thus a housewife who is laid off from her factory job but does not look for a new job is not counted as unemployed even though she may be drawing unemployment insurance. Furthermore, the Census Bureau's system gives no weight to partial employment.