Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Mary-Jane 2037 days ago
Which again, has been the case for a very long time. The participation rate has been tracked for as long; rather than changing how unemployment is calculated the media could just reporting that metric instead. Seems like a simpler solution.
1 comments

> Which again, has been the case for a very long time.

We all seem to be admitting that it's a bad, misleading statistic. So why are we so committed to keeping it around forever? Why not change the definition?

People say "for historical comparison", but what's the point of a historical comparison of a statistic that we all admit now is bad and misleading?

The fact that something has always been done a certain way is no justification for continuing to do it, especially if the initial decision was misguided in some way.