Business Unemployment

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Fephisto Posted: Mon, May 19 2008 6:28 PM

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I'll start off by saying that I pretty much find all government statistics fairly unwieldy:  calculation problem.

But, I was wondering, if your logic compells you to gravitate importance to a (labour) unemployment rate, then why wouldn't the same logic compell you to look at some sort of (business) unemployment rate?  Also, how do you guys think (if you could measure such a thing) such a rate would look like over the past century?

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Jon Irenicus replied on Mon, May 19 2008 6:33 PM

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Yes, we need to measure all those involuntarily employee-less businesses.

-Jon

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LanceH replied on Tue, May 20 2008 7:11 AM

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Are you asking how many businesses might be unemployed?

How would you define such a thing?  Is a business considered unemployed when it has no clients?  How long does it have to go without clients for?  If a shop is empty for half the day, then is it considered 50% unemployed?

Or perhaps the unemployment rate of a business should be the proportion of time that staff have nothing worthwhile to do.  That would be easy enough to measure for the civil service...

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Fephisto replied on Tue, May 20 2008 12:34 PM

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LanceH, I ask the same questions about how regular labour unemployment can be accurately measured.  I have and offer no idea about how business unemployment could be measured.  My question is purely theoretical.