2021/01/02 by John Komlos · 1 citation
Health Professions · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Employment and Welfare Studies #Labor market dynamics and wage inequality #Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth
paper · doi:10.1080/05775132.2020.1863547
openalex publication_date 2021/01/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
The official U.S. unemployment rate is an inadequate measure of labor market conditions. This poses a major challenge for basic research and for successful economic policy. In this piece, the author proposes a new definition of unemployment is proposed. It considers those part-time workers who would like to work full time as 62.7% employed and 37.3% unemployed inasmuch as this is the proportion of time they work relative to full-time workers. New monthly estimates of the unemployment rate are calculated for the period 1994–2019 and find that their average during this 25-year period was 10.7% or 5.0 percentage points above the official rate of 5.7%.