Current Population Survey

But after 2000, we have this other survey called the American Community Survey.

We also have another survey called the Current Population Survey.

So we have a pretty good sense of how many immigrants there are, how many non-citizens there are, and so forth.

But you would have to re-ask it.

But the other stuff is a survey, which means that most of these methods have both a lag and a blind spot.

So the current population survey, that's the household survey that gives us the unemployment rate every month, asks about one reference week.

So if you didn't have a job or you weren't even looking for one during that specific week, you fall into a bucket.

And which bucket you fall into determines whether you show up in the number at all.

Before getting to what's been happening, one thing that's useful to think about is how unemployment duration, as we economists call it, is actually measured.

The main source of labor market data in the United States is the Current Population Survey, or CPS.

That's a survey that goes out to households every month.

Among the many things they ask, there are questions about employment status.