Question

A BLS labor market survey of two households has gathered the following data:

Household 1: Candy worked 20 hours last week setting up her internet shopping business. The rest of the week she completed application forms and attended two job interviews. Husband Jerry worked 40 hours at his work at GM. Daughter Meg, a student, worked 10 hours at her weekend job at Starbucks.

Household 2: Ari had no work last week but was going to be recalled to his regular job in two weeks. Partner Costa, after months of searching for a job and not being able to find one, has stopped looking and will be back to school.

Classify each of the 5 people into the labor market category used by the BLS.

Answer 1

Household 1: Candy worked 20 hours last week setting up her internet shopping business. The rest of the week she completed application forms and attended two job interviews. Husband Jerry worked 40 hours at his work at GM. Daughter Meg, a student, worked 10 hours at her weekend job at Starbucks.

Candy would be part of the working, age population as she a above 16 years of age and is not in jail, hospital or some other forms of institutional care or in the U.S. armed forces. Candy would also be part of labor force and would be termed as employed because she has worked for more than 15 hours (exactly 20 hours) as unpaid worker in her own business during the week before the survey.

Candy's husband Jerry would also be part of the working, age population as he is above 16 years of age and is not in jail, hospital, or some other forms of institutional care or in the U.S. armed forces. Jerry would also be part of labor force and would be termed as employed because he has worked 40 hours at his job at GM during the week before the survey and all those who worked at least 1 hour as paid employees during the week before the survey are considered as employed.

Their daughter Meg would also be part of the working, age population as she is above 16 years of age and is not in jail, hospital, or some other forms of institutional care or in the U.S. armed forces. Meg would also be part of labor force and would be termed as employed because she has worked 10 hours at her weekend job at Starbucks during the week before the survey and all those who worked at least 1 hour as paid employees during the week before the survey are considered as employed.

Household 2: Ari had no work last week but was going to be recalled to his regular job in two weeks. Partner Costa, after months of searching for a job and not being able to find one, has stopped looking and will be back to school.

Ari would be part of working, age population as he is above 16 years of age and is not in jail, hospital, or some other forms of institutional care or in the U.S. armed forces. Jerry would also be part of labor force and would be termed as unemployed he was going to be recalled to his regular job in two weeks and all those who were waiting to be recalled to a job from which they had been laid off are considered as unemployed

Ari's partner Kosta would be part of the working, age population as she is above 16 years of age and is not in jail, hospital, or some other forms of institutional care or in the U.S. armed forces. Kosta would not be part of labor force as she is neither employed nor unemployed. She could not be considered officially employed because of two reasons, firstly, she had not worked at least 1 hour as paid employee or had worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers in her own business during the week before the survey. Secondly, she also does not have the full time job or business from which she was temporarily absent during the week before the survey.

She could not be considered officially unemployed because of two reasons: Firstly, even though she had no employment but then also she had not looked for job during the week before the survey. Secondly, she also had not been making any specific efforts to find a job during the previous four weeks and also had not been waiting to be recalled to a job from which she had been laid off.