Origins of the Unemployment Rate: The Lasting Legacy of Measurement without Theory
American Economic Review · 2011 · Volume 101 · Issue 3
Abstract
The modern definition of unemployment emerged in the late 1930s from research conducted at the Works Progress Administration and the Census Bureau. According to this definition, people who are not working but actively searching for work are counted as unemployed. This concept was first used in the Enumerative Check Census, a follow-up sample for the 1937 Census of Unemployment, and continued with the Monthly Report on the Labor Force survey, begun in December 1939 by the Works Progress Administration. A similar definition is now used to measure unemployment around the world.
Keywords
Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Macroeconomic Data, Data Access, Employment, Unemployment, Wages, Intergenerational Income Distribution, Aggregate Human Capital, Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: Europe: Pre-1913
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