‘Error’ Made Unemployment Rate Look Better

“When the U.S. government’s official jobs report for May came out on Friday, it included a note at the bottom saying there had been a major ‘error’ indicating that the unemployment rate likely should be higher than the widely reported 13.3 percent rate,” the Washington Post reports.

“The special note said that if this ‘misclassification error’ had not occurred, the ‘overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported,’ meaning the unemployment rate would be about 16.3 percent for May, but that would still be an improvement from an unemployment rate of more than 19 percent for April, applying the same standards.”