Tuesday, July 7, 2009

How to Measure Underemployment

Well you could start with the unemployment rate and add discouraged workers. You could then refine your analysis by adopting the suggestion from The Social Costs of Underemployment: Inadequate Employment as Disguised Unemployment by Doley and Prause and include involuntary part-time work and poverty-level pay.

Wait a second. Let me check. Ah, you're lucky. This book too is available from Amazon which means you can get it in your hands before you know who by clicking on the image below. By the way, what is our national bean-counter's estimate for underemployment?

The Social Costs of Underemployment: Inadequate Employment as Disguised Unemployment

3 comments:

  1. 8-| I thought you would have given a detailed explanation

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  2. The message here is to take the unemployment figures with a grain of salt. We have to look beyond popular statistics.

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  3. Sanjay's comment is spot on. Data collection is critical to progress in any field but we should consider them merely like headlamps in a car meant to light up the road to our destination. We remain the driver and we should use our faculty to discern, anticipate and navigate to move forward. Otherwise, we end up fooling ourselves, even if we meant to fool others! The quality of the illumination depends on how updated, contextualised and relevant the data actually is. If only magic bullets ever existed as TINAwallahs have it!

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