> Consistency in how statistics are measured is important. You can rag on the methods but without consistency it’d be meaningless.
Is it meaningless? Isn't it important to get as accurate an assessment as possible of the current situation? Arguably that's even more important than historical comparisons.
> The majority of what you term as “hopeless” is seniors that are let go and eventually decide to retire rather than entering the work force at wages less than they earned previously.
Is there a citation for this? Millions of people are newly out of work now as a result of pandemic-related shutdowns, so it seems highly unlikely that primarily seniors are affected by an inability to find work.
Inconsistent definitions or methods render statistical comparisons meaningless.
You need that historical baseline to assess the current situation.
To provide an extreme example, as extremes are often useful in illustrating failure cases, it would be trivial to say that the murder rate in the US has dropped by nigh-on 100%. Simply redefine "murder" to mean "persons killed by a woman wearing a blue hat on the third Tuesday of February".
> You need that historical baseline to assess the current situation.
But what if the historical baseline has always been misleading, and undercounting a problem?
> Simply redefine "murder" to mean "persons killed by a woman wearing a blue hat on the third Tuesday of February".
This isn't a useful example, because the point of redefining unemployment is to get a more accurate view of it, whereas this redefinition of murder gives a less accurate and completely pointless view of the problem.
> But what if the historical baseline has always been misleading, and undercounting a problem?
Then you create a new metric, but keep the old one around for historical baselines.
By the way, this is what the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is doing with the various unemployment metrics.
> The point of redefining unemployment is to get a more accurate view of it, whereas this redefinition of murder gives a less accurate and completely pointless view of the problem.
Is it meaningless? Isn't it important to get as accurate an assessment as possible of the current situation? Arguably that's even more important than historical comparisons.
> The majority of what you term as “hopeless” is seniors that are let go and eventually decide to retire rather than entering the work force at wages less than they earned previously.
Is there a citation for this? Millions of people are newly out of work now as a result of pandemic-related shutdowns, so it seems highly unlikely that primarily seniors are affected by an inability to find work.