I am an average reader to economists: never took a course in the subject, have read and heard statistics quoted and interpreted in the mass media. I appreciate the correction in this book of errors in the mass media. I shall look upon the writers and publications scrutinized by this book with stronger analysis now. But I wish the author of this book had enjoyed the privilege of a better editor.
One disappointment about this book is that it itself commits errors. In the name of identifying journalist errors, it commits author errors. They are of the sort a non-economist editor would notice. They may not always affect the author's thesis or argument but they make the thesis and argument less accessible to the public.
(Page number references are from the year 2005, hardcover edition.)
One type of error is carelessness. In a somewhat unimportant error, Epstein says that unincorporated self-employment is the only category that the Household Jobs Survey includes and that the Establishment Survey omits (33). Epstein himself was pointing out three paragraphs earlier, though, that agricultural occupations -- farming, forestry, fishing, and hunting -- are overlooked by the Establishment Survey while included in the Household Survey. Even though the growth of agricultural occupations was flat over recent years, to say later that only unincorporated self-employment is tracked by the Household Survey and omited by the Establishment Survey is to speak too loosely for the average reader to follow.
Epstein complicates acceptance of his views by committing errors of inconsistency. First, he points out that unemployment duration is longer now than in earlier decades because women have come to participate in the work force in more serious career positions and look for work more carefully after they leave their job. The work force is older and older workers are also more careful about what position they accept. (46) Later, he says that Bureau of Labor Statistics economists adjust for the 1994 redesign of the Household Survey and find that unemployment duration was longer in 1990 than in 2000, and 2000 durations were not longer than in 1980. (48) What makes this inconsistency even bigger is that he just went through a long analogy to cancer, to explain a job situation in which unemployment durations are longer. He said there are more cancer cases nowadays only because more people live longer, comparing people who live longer to women and older people who look for work more carefully. Enviromental and dietary factors are not to blame for more cancer cases, just as the job market is not to blame for longer durations of unemployment. (45-46) So, there must be longer durations of unemployment in recent years --- or have there not been?
Epstein's wording is also misleading sometimes --- not saying what he intends to say. The Bureau of Labor Statistics revised their definition of Hidden Unemployed in 1994 by adding two new qualifications to the old ones ("also had to answer yes to these two questions", p. 63). One of those old qualifications was giving a job market reason for not looking for a job during the past month. But after he describes the two new qualifications, he says most of those who meet them "gave reasons other than discouragement for not having looked for work over the past month". But that reason was required under the old design; it is still required to be included in the Hidden Unemployed category. It takes a lot of thinking about it, puzzling, to figure out that those two new qualifications for Hidden Unemployment really aren't in addition to the old ones but are part of a different combination of qualifications to be fit in that category.
Also misleading is Epstein's use of "discouragement". Discouragement means more than some type of reason for not looking for work. Although in normal conversation, discouragement is a term that could describe an attitude about the job market, in this discussion the term has a larger meaning. Discouragement is a BLS category of responses to a lot of questions. It means all of the qualifications that the BLS looks for in fitting an individual into this category. Confusion results from using the same term in the same discussion, without note, in different ways. He says that most of those who "also had to answer yes" to the two new questions gave reasons other discouragement for not looking for a job. His decision to use the word "discouragement" for giving other than a job market reason throws the passage into chaos. We are to think that even though they are not "discouraged", they are Discouraged Workers.
These four writing style errors were found by reading three chapters. Imagine how much difficulty and error results from reading the whole book!
It is very entangled writing, and makes for much re-reading, not say dizziness. Just as the mass media's often brief treatment of the economy makes their audience unsure what to think without further reflection, Gene Epstein's unclear and inconsistent presentation keeps his readers unsure what to think, too. If this is supposed to be a book so the average person can make sense of mass media coverage, it should be more accessible to the public.
