To: "Homestead mailing list" <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [Homestead] Fw: Poverty ? Yeah. Right.
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 2004 18:05:45 -0700
Doesn't much look like the cheap upper room where
the original 12 gathered, without anything in the way
of possessions or real estate because they had to
travel light - whatever happened in the intervening
centuries to the 'message' has certainly changed, too :
>. I would be curious to read how they have
> changed this.
The major change is this: until this year they tried to determine the
number of people in an area (or the country) who were employed. This
included training programs and a lot of other things besides jobs. To this
number they added the number of unemployment claims to come up with 100% of
the employable people.
Under the new system in place this year, they try to determine the
population of people who COULD work if they wanted to and divide the number
of unemployment claims by that to get the percent of unemployed.
Like this: In and area there were 92 people who had jobs and 8 applicants
for unemployment ... 100 people in the workforce. So the unemployment rate
is 8%. But now they sample the population and determine that in that area
there are 160 people who are of the age and condition to work and they COULD
work if they were of a mind to and the same 8 people are applying for
benefits, so the unemployment rate is now 5%. The population and number of
unemployed are the same in both cases.
James
[Homestead] Fw: Poverty ? Yeah. Right.,
Toni Hawryluk, 10/08/2004