On Wed, Mar 24, 2004 at 01:38:59PM -0600, Dan Minette wrote: > > From: "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > On Wed, Mar 24, 2004 at 09:42:48AM -0600, Dan Minette wrote:
> > > This is an interesting question. On the face of it, your > > > arguement is intuative, but there are other factors involved. > > > People who work in housing, but are not "on the books" are usually > > > (or at least often) illegal immigrants. They tend to eschew > > > filling out government forms and surveys. > > I don't follow your point here. Are you saying that we shouldn't > > count these as jobs because the people doing them are not legally in > > the country? > No, I'm saying that they would probably not appear in the household > survey because they would not fill it out. In that case I'll have to disagree with your first point. There are definitely a significant number of self-employed people doing things like contract jobs for homebuilding who will be counted in the household survey but not in the payroll survey. http://www.bls.gov/cps/ces_cps_trends.pdf The household survey includes "agriculture and related employment, NONAGRICULTURAL SELF EMPLOYED, unpaid family and private household workers, and workers on unpaid leave from their jobs". > In short, to be very clear, I think that most "off the books" > employment is off the radar for both the household and the payroll > measures of unemployment. The B.L.S. is not as certain as you are: " `Off-the-books' employment -- Workers who are paid `off-the-books' are not reported in the payroll survey. The household survey could possibly include some of these workers, but BLS cannot determine the extent to which they might be reflected in household survey employment." On the other hand, the B.L.S. does seem to agree that a large discrepancy between the surveys was due to population estimates. But they have since corrected for that by revising the population growth down (see the graph in the link above), and the household survey still shows a slightly better job market recently than the payroll survey. I think that difference is probably due to a booming employment market for the self-employed, such as small-time contractors participating in homebuilding work. -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
