Let me ask you something: If someone from the government called you at home and said, “I want to ask you roughly 200 questions about everyone in your household,” would you hang up the phone?
If you didn’t slam the phone down, would you answer the questions honestly? And even if you tried to answer honestly, would you have enough information to accurately describe the job-search habits of, say, your recently graduated daughter who swears she is looking for a job but who would really prefer to spend the summer on the beach?
Why am I asking all these questions? Because that’s how the Census Bureau on behalf of the Labor Department determines the nation’s unemployment rate each month.
This Friday we’ll get some new figures from the Labor Department telling us how the economy is allegedly doing. One number that will make the headlines will come from a survey of employers. That’s called the Establishment Survey, and Wall Street is guessing that it’ll show 159,000 new jobs were created in May.
But right now I want to talk about what’s called the Household Survey. Each month the Census Bureau calls 60,000 households with a list of questions that it says takes about 7 1/2 minutes to answer (a claim that I find hard to believe).
Those 60,000 households represent the entire US population and, as surveys go, this one is considered scientific because of the more-than-ample sample size. The Labor Department tells me that about 90 percent of the houses it calls actually answer the questions (another claim I find hard to believe). You get paid nothing for helping the government. (That fact I can believe.)
If you are among the lucky 60,000, you will be called for four months, then taken out of the survey for eight months — as others get a chance — and returned for another four months. The latest survey started on May 20, and people were asked to respond based on work activity for the week of May 12-18.
The Labor Department reports the unemployment rate in a bunch of different ways. For instance, if the Census Bureau surveyors are told by whoever picks up the phone in one of those 60,000 households that the father hasn’t looked for work during the past four weeks, then Dad won’t be included in the official unemployment rate.
The April unemployment rate you saw in the headlines last month was 7.5 percent, and that figure is expected to be unchanged this Friday.
The broadest unemployment rate — called the U-6 — showed 13.9 percent of people who were searching for work couldn’t find a job. That figure would include a person who hasn’t sought employment for four months.
But the U-6 figure doesn’t even include all the people who are unemployed. If surveyors are told that a member of the household hasn’t either worked or looked for work in the past 12 months,the unemployed person becomes, essentially, nonexistent. That person isn’t considered unemployed by any government measure, even if he has stopped looking for work because he has become so discouraged.
It only takes a few thousand changed responses to move the government’s numbers. While the Labor Department doesn’t like to talk about this, if 2,000 people were suddenly reported as being out of work and looking for a job, it could increase the jobless rate for the month by 0.1 percentage point.
So what’s my point?
Well, probably the most important tip you should take from this column is not to pick up the phone if the Census Bureau calls you in the middle of any month — unless you want your dinner to get cold.
Or, if you really want to have a little fun, pick up the phone and give all the wrong answers. Really, it’s a form of civil disobedience that can be practiced without leaving your lounge chair and between sips of beer.
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Facebook is in trouble now. It has pissed off women, and the ladies are calling advertisers.
And that pisses me off.
Last year I began a campaign against Facebook when that company showed incredible lack of judgment about a page on the site that joked about raping children. The first Facebook page I went after was called “Pedophiles Are People Too,” and the website allowed it to exist because it was deemed as nothing more than controversial humor.
I called Facebook’s advertisers and eventually the page came down.
Women more recently complained about Facebook pages like “Violently Raping Your Friend Just for Laughs” and “Kicking Your Girlfriend in the Fanny Because She Won’t Make You a Sandwich.”
I don’t see anything funny in these misogynistic pages either.
But why aren’t the women and advertisers who are now complaining about anti-female content also attacking Facebook about the pedophile pages, which are becoming more blatant? Watchdog groups say the pedophile content on Facebook is out of control and the company is doing too little about the problem.
The company, I’m afraid, can no longer behave like a naughty Internet adolescent — when it comes to women, kids or anyone else.
Facebook’s only source of revenue comes from advertising. If companies become too afraid to hawk their products via Facebook, then Facebook will dry up and blow away like many Internet sites before it.
I give Facebook another five years as a public company unless it changes its ways.