Originally Posted by White Rabbit

Every western country is engaged in redefining their 'unemployment' number calculations on a semi-regular basis. No two countries in the world calculate or measures employment figures, unemployment rates, GDP, inflation or productivity in the same way. Methinks they do this to prevent or discourage comparative analysis.

Apparently, most governments also routinely change their formulas used for calculating these complex figures on a semi-regular basis to make comparative analysis with past data also difficult.

Their reasons for this are obvious. It is easy to lie with statistics and 90% of the population can usually be fooled by these 'massaged' figures.

Indeed, how many times have you been told that the USA has a higher productivity and GDP growth rate than Europe over the last twenty years? Serious comparative analysis shows that Europe and the USA have maintained parity in GDP growth almost every year and if anything, productivity has been rising just slightly faster in Europe than in the USA. But the official published figures suggests the opposite. All mass media and political discussions focus on the official numbers, not the actual ones.