Origins of the Unemployment Rate: The Lasting Legacy of Measurement without Theory
American Economic Review
vol. 101,
no. 3, May 2011
(pp. 552-57)
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.Citation
Card, David. 2011. "Origins of the Unemployment Rate: The Lasting Legacy of Measurement without Theory." American Economic Review, 101 (3): 552-57. DOI: 10.1257/aer.101.3.552JEL Classification
- C82 Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Macroeconomic Data; Data Access
- E24 Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital
- N33 Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: Europe: Pre-1913