Keeping Count

The Labor Department calculates the unemployment rate much the way Gallup takes a public opinion poll. Government officials each month telephone or visit 65,000 randomly selected households to determine whether any teen-ager or adult living there is jobless and has looked for work at least once in the previous four weeks. If a person fits both criteria, he or she is officially unemployed.

The figures do not go unchallenged. Critics say that the results are either too high or too low. Some charge that since unemployment-benefits programs require that recipients actively seek employment, people often lie and thus inflate the unemployment figure. Others argue that the monthly statistic underestimates the jobless because it does not include so-called discouraged workers, those who do not have jobs and are no longer seeking them. These are now thought to number about 920,000.

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