TY  - JOUR
AU  - Darby,Michael R.
TI  - Three-And-A-Half Million U.S. Employees Have Been Mislaid: Or, An Explanation of Unemployment, 1934-1941
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 88
PY  - 1975
Y2  - May 1975
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w0088
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w0088.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Michael R. Darby
John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management
University of California, Los Angeles
110 Westwood Plaza, Box 951481
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1481
Tel: 310/825-4180
Fax: 310/454-2748
E-Mail: michael.r.darby@anderson.ucla.edu
AB  - A major conceptual error in the standard BLS and Lebergott unemployment estimates for 1933-1943 is reported. Emergency workers (employees of federal contracyclical programs such as WPA) were counted as unemployed on a normal-jobs-to-be-created instead of job-seekers unemployment definition. For 1934-1941, the corrected unemployment levels are reduced by two to three-and-a half million people and the rates by 4 to 7 percentage points. The corrected data show strong movement toward the natural unemployment rate after 1933 and are very well explained by an anticipations-search model using annual full-time earnings.
ER  -