In: Economics
Discuss the problems of using the current population survey to measure employment.
The population survey conducted by the bureau of labour statistics asks respondents regarding their work status i.e. wheather they are employed, currently looking for work but not working, or not looking for work (and not working). Only those who are currently looking for work but not working are considered as unemployed. However, many respondents are not clear whether they have been looking for work in the past four weeks (the criteria to belong to labour force). They may be facing disguised unemployment while working in shared enterprise or farm, they may be working part time, or looking after household. In such cases, it difficult to say whether they are unemployed, looking for work, or voluntarily not working for money. Due to many such individuals participating in the survey, they are either removed from the sample or included in some assumed category while calculating unemployment rate. This may lead to incorrect and biased estimates of unemployment rate.