Labor Department published flawed estimates of weekly jobless claims

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) drew attention to the inaccuracy of the weekly data of the Department of Labor on the number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits. Now the Ministry of Labor will point out the current inaccuracies in its reports.

As noted in the GAO report, the ministry equates the number of applications to the number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits. However, it is really about the number of weeks for which the benefit is requested. For example, if one person applies for 6 weeks, then the statistics will reflect this as appeals of six individual applicants.

This method of counting was considered traditional before the pandemic and always made it possible to accurately calculate the number of beneficiaries. However, against the background of rising unemployment and the number of support programs in March and April, the data ceased to reflect the number of unemployed in the country.

Despite the inaccuracy of the US Department of Labor data, economists believe that they provide an estimate of the general trend.