Jobless Total Greatly Exceeds Prior Estimates --- Survey Change Shows Level Of Unemployed People Is About 600,000 Higher
WASHINGTON -- There are roughly 600,000 more Americans out of work and looking for jobs than previously believed, the Labor Department said.</br></br>Major changes in the way the Bureau of Labor Statistics tallies the number of jobless workers have given department officials a better handle of how many people are unemployed, and there appears to be several hundred thousand more of them.</br></br>The result is that the high-profile unemployment rate will very likely bump up by half a percentage point when the changes -- which involve asking better-crafted questions and using a computer instead of a pad of paper to record survey answers -- take effect in January. The first employment report under the new system will be issued Feb. 4.</br></br>If a higher unemployment rate is reported as a result of the agency's changes, it wouldn't mean the economy has suddenly gotten worse. It would indicate, however, that the department has been consistently underestimating the number of unemployed people. October's unemployment rate, the latest figure available, rose to 6.8% of the work force, putting the jobless total at about 8.8 million people.</br></br>Such reworking of statistics, though, often confounds policy makers who find they have been making decisions based on one set of assumptions, only to find that a different picture is more accurate.