Three-And-A-Half Million U.S. Employees Have Been Mislaid: Or, An Explanation of Unemployment, 1934-1941 / Michael R. Darby.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Darby, Michael R.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w0088.

NBER working paper series no. w0088

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Unemployment.

Unemployment--History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Three-And-A-Half Million U.S. Employees Have Been Mislaid

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1975.

Cambridge, Massachusetts : National Bureau of Economic Research, 1975.

Summary:

A major conceptual error in the standard BLS and Lebergott unemployment estimates for 1933-1943 is reported. Emergency workers (employees of federal contracyclical programs such as WPA) were counted as unemployed on a normal-jobs-to-be-created instead of job-seekers unemployment definition. For 1934-1941, the corrected unemployment levels are reduced by two to three-and-a half million people and the rates by 4 to 7 percentage points. The corrected data show strong movement toward the natural unemployment rate after 1933 and are very well explained by an anticipations-search model using annual full-time earnings.

Notes:

Print version record

May 1975.