A timely measure of unemployment |
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| Authors: | Ray Thomas |
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| Institution: | Ray Thomas is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University. In 2003 he was awarded a Campion Fellowship by the Royal Statistical Society to pursue studies of PAR unemployment rates. Apart from labour market statistics, he has a strong interest in the functions of statistics in society. He was Honorary Secretary of the Official Statistics Section Committee of the Royal Statistical Society from 2000 to 2003. |
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| Abstract: | Conventional unemployment statistics have two dimensions—size and date. Population-at-risk unemployment rates add a third dimension—time. They are unlikely to revolutionise our picture of the nature of unemployment, says Ray Thomas . But they do give a more accurate and comprehensive picture than existing measures, and provide new insights into old problems, such as indicating the importance of statistics of entrants in helping to explain geographical variation in unemployment. |
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