Chaitra Nagaraja is Associate Professor of Statistics at the Gabelli School of Business at Fordham University. Prior to joining Fordham, she was a researcher at the U.S. Census Bureau. She combined her various research interests with her love of history in a new book, Measuring Society, which explores the history and measurement of official statistics.
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John Bailer: Official statistics and a very simple question will be the start of today’s Stats and Short Stories, where we explore the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics. I’m John Bailer, Chair of the Department of Statistics at Miami University. Stats and Short Stories is a production of Miami University’s Departments of Statistics, and Media, Journalism and Film, as well as our partners at the American Statistical Association. Joining me in the studio today are regular panelists Rosemary Pennington and Richard Campbell, both of the Department of Media, Journalism and Film. Our special guest today is Chaitra Nagaraja, Professor of Strategy and Statistics at Fordham University, also the author of the book Measuring Society, and what an awesome contribution Chaitra. Thank you for being here with us today.
Chaitra Nagaraja: Thanks for having me.
Bailer: You know, I said I would start with a really easy question, think of this as like the softball question to get going. So why is it hard to count how many people are unemployed? I mean, we all know how to count, that’s got to be simple.
Nagaraja: Well, if you want to find out the fraction of people who are unemployed you need to figure out who is unemployed, and who should be in the labor force. And both are actually pretty difficult. So, labor force means people who are- you would say, eligible to be employed. So, you don’t want babies, that’s probably not a good plan to include them. Maybe you shouldn’t include people who are retired or disabled, and those kinds of things. So, trying to figure out the characteristics of the people who you would count as eligible for employment- that’s one task. Then you have to count the people who are unemployed. So over history they’ve done it in many different ways. Currently they look at if you have a job. It doesn’t matter if it’s a good job, a permanent job, a full-time job, none of those things are really counted here. If you have a job you’re employed, or if you’re looking for one and you have been in the recent past, you’re also considered in the labor force, and you would be unemployed. But if you’ve given up looking for a job, they don’t count you in that group anymore for the official statistic for unemployment, although there are other statistics for unemployment. There are six of them that try to count people in different ways depending on the level of unemployment or employment, and so forth.
Rosemary Pennington: So why do they not count people who have given up on looking for a job?
Nagaraja: They are counted in a different statistic. They are called U-1 through U-6. So, it- sort of roughly speaking- as you go from U-1 to U-6 you have more types of people counted as unemployed. They used to ask why people didn’t have a job. And there are lots of reasons, you know? My company let me go. I had other things going on. There’s lots of different reasons why you may suddenly find yourself unemployed. But they in the end needed some specific definition and if you hadn’t looked for a job in four weeks’ time you would be counted as in the labor force but unemployed, but if you had given up looking for a job, meaning you hadn’t looked for one in the past four weeks, you would be counted as not in the labor force. It’s just a decision that was made that made it simpler to count. But those types of people are included in other statistics that are produced by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, they’re just not the one that people focus on in the news.
Campbell: So, let’s pretend you’re head of a news division at a network, and typically the way the news media does it is they just report a number, right? They just say unemployment has dropped to four-point-whatever it is, and then they stop. So, if you were head of a news division how would you report that number and the meaning of it? A lot of times these numbers are given, and there’s no context for it, how would you change that if you could?
Nagaraja: I would still report that number because it is still a number that everyone uses. So that is important to include, but you could also include some of the other numbers which are also published in the monthly jobs report called the Employment Situation, where they talk about the number of new jobs and all kinds of things like that. To give a sense of you know, okay, maybe this number dropped, but some other number you know, changed in a different way. That way you get a little bit more context about what it means. For instance, one of the unemployment statistics talks about long term unemployment. You know, have you been unemployed for a long period of time and so forth. So, using some of those other statistics does give you more context about the one number that everyone is talking about.
Campbell: Thank you very good.
Bailer: Although I don’t know that I’ve seen some of those other numbers generally reported.
Nagaraja: They aren’t.
Bailer: I mean, so while they exist, I’m not sure they’re applied.
Nagaraja: Yeah, they’re reported in the official publication, but I agree with you. There isn’t much discussion about those numbers in the media. And by politicians, only to sort of poke at the opposing party. I feel like the definitions are used more to poke holes in opposing party that they are to give context to the number.
Bailer: Well gosh Chaitra, now I’m completely disillusioned. It’s hard to count.
Nagaraja: It is hard to count. I mean actually people have wondered why even the census is difficult if you’re just counting people; don’t you already know?
Bailer: It’s darn hard. Well, I’m afraid that’s all the time we have for this episode of Stats and Short Stories. Chaitra, thank you so much for being here.
Nagaraja: Thank you so much for having me.
Bailer: It’s been great to have you. Stats and Short Stories is a partnership between Miami university’s departments of Statistics, and Media, Journalism and Film, and the American Statistical Association. You can follow us on twitter or apple podcasts or other places where you can find podcasts. If you’d like to share your thoughts on our program send your email to statsandstories@miamioh.edu or check us out at statsandstories.net. Be sure to listen for future episodes and editions of Stats and Short Stories, where we discuss the stories behind the statistics, and the statistics behind the stories.