This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, February 6, 2012. I'm Caleb Brown.

Unemployment is down again, but that's not the only measure to examine if you want a clear picture of the movements of employment in the United States.

Mark Calabria, director of the Cato Institute's Financial Regulation Studies, wades through some of the data.

On their surface, the unemployment numbers actually look quite good. We saw an increase from December to January of a little less than 250,000,

two hundred forty three thousand to be exact,

ain't a small decline of the unemployment rate.

And even more positive side of that is the vast majority of these jobs were actually

private sector jobs so this wasn't some massive expansion of government but

actually private payrolls particularly professional services but even things

like construction posted gains.

Now there was noted by many people this big jump in the number of Americans not

in the workforce, not participating in the workforce.

And this is an interesting facet of the data.

Actually what was found was that the number of persons not in the labor force increased by almost 1.3 million.

But this is really an increase that is,

to some extent, an artifact of the data.

The primary data upon which the unemployment rate

in the population is estimated, it's called the current

population survey. We economists refer to it as the household survey. Now this survey is,

it's a survey. I mean it's about 60,000 households. So you know they're not calling every single person in the country they're calling 60,000 households and asking them, you know, did you work? How many hours did you work? And of course because it is a survey every couple of years, particularly every 10 years

it's benchmarked to the decennial census. And so January of this year was the first time

in which this is going to be benchmarked to the decennial census.

...