{"id":49420,"date":"2022-03-16T11:33:11","date_gmt":"2022-03-16T01:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/?p=49420"},"modified":"2022-03-16T11:33:11","modified_gmt":"2022-03-16T01:33:11","slug":"uk-unemployment-rate-is-more-like-5-6-per-cent-rather-than-3-9-per-cent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/?p=49420","title":{"rendered":"UK unemployment rate is more like 5.6 per cent rather than 3.9 per cent"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tI have very little time today but there was one question I get asked on a regular basis that I thought I would this space to quickly answer. People wonder who the participation rate affects the official measure of unemployment. For example, the UK Office of National Statistics released data yesterday (March 15, 2022) – Labour market overview, UK: March 2022<\/a> – which showed the official unemployment rate had fallen to 3.9 per cent – a decline of 0.2 points. They said this was the result of employment rising by 275,000 in February (the employment to population ratio rose by 0.1 points). They also said that the inactivity rate for those between 16 and 64) had risen by 0.1 points to 21.3 points and was 1.1 points above the pre-pandemic level. So the question I get asked is whether things are really getting better? So here is how it works.
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Does a falling unemployment rate always signal good times?<\/h2>\n

The answer is no.<\/p>\n

To explain that you need to understand how the labour force framework is organised.<\/p>\n

The Labour Force Framework constitutes a set of definitions and conventions that allow the national statisticians to collect data and produce statistics about the labour market.<\/p>\n

These statistics include employment, unemployment, economic inactivity, and underemployment, which can be combined with other survey data covering for example, job vacancies, earnings, trade union membership, industrial disputes and productivity to provide a comprehensive picture of the way the labour market is performing.<\/p>\n

The Labour Force Framework is a classification system, governed by a set of rules and categories.<\/p>\n

It forms the foundation for cross country comparisons of labour market data.<\/p>\n

The framework is made operational through the International Labour Organization (ILO) and its International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS).<\/p>\n

These conferences and expert meetings develop the guidelines or norms for implementing the labour force framework and generating the national labour force data.<\/p>\n

There is no conspiracy involved in the compilation of these statistics. One just needs to understand the different definitions to fully appreciate what each number means.<\/p>\n

The rules contained within the labour force framework have the following features:<\/p>\n