Unemployment in the United States - The True Story

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Unemployment in the United States - The True Story

This article is an attempt to examine the numbers of unemployment in the United States more closely. It contends that the Bureau of Labor Statistics misrepresents the percentage rate of unemployment in the United States in its monthly surveys.

The definition to unemployment given by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the article is as follows: “People who had no employment during the reference week and that were available for work at the time, they made efforts to find employment sometime during the four week period ending with the reference week.” The article argues that the definition of unemployment given by the Bureau of Labor Statistics limits the number of individuals who can participate in the survey therefore, misrepresenting the nation’s perception towards the rate of unemployment.

The article contends that there are millions of people in the United States that have been unemployed prior to the 4 weeks required to be counted in the Bureau of Labor Statistics survey. It also describes the different kinds of unemployment and why it is that the monthly survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics is misleading. It explains the composition of unemployment and the duration of time it lasts among people. Instead of the 3.9% calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics it concludes that an estimate of 7% is more accurate.

This article derives from a recent paper done by David Anderson of Centre College in the Journal of Law and Economics. It attempts to quantify the total yearly cost of all crime in America on a yearly basis and is constructed based on the thought of how much money would be saved if we lived in a crime free society. The total money saved, according to the article, would be 1.7 trillion dollars. The article explains in detail the way that this number was calculated.

In the article, the total number calculated in the production and services of preventing crime would be 397 billion annually. Also, it calculates that the average American spends 4 minutes a day preventing crime by locking and unlocking valuables. The estimated number wasted by not producing money in those four minutes a day, by all Americans yearly, is 89.6 billion dollars. The article explains that millions of people are sitting idle in jails when they could be out helping the economy.

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