Well, I am saying that over time both parties have used them to their advantage, especially during elections.
If you're talking actual manipulation and changing, then no. Never happened, though Nixon wanted to. It's practically impossible to do so.
Example: For the April numbers, data collection by the Census Bureau was the week of March 17-23. So the BLS employees had 9 working days to compile, aggregate, seasonally adjust, write the dozens of tables and submit the report to publications on April 4th. That's when the Commissioner approved it and it went to the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers (the only person outside BLS authorized a pre-release copy of the report) and he could tell the results to the President.
By that point, it's too late to make any changes and far too complicated. Any one change will affect multiple other series. Add on that Census has access to the raw data, and BEA has some access as well, and academic researchers are given access (under standard confidentiality agreements) and the state and local area data comes from a joint Federal/State program. And there's Congressional oversight. It would take a large conspiracy and a lot of law breaking to manipulate the data, and given the short time frame, it would be almost impossible to do so. And no one has ever come forward to claim any such manipulation.
As to specifics, when you want to look at something to empirically determine if there is a definitive number, or percentage you can measure, and track, I would think that something like people that have dropped out of the UE rolls, and given up ARE part of the total UE picture.
Yes and no. First, there are no "UE rolls" used in the UE rate..it's all from a survey. As for given up...that's out of scope of what the main UE rate is meant to measure. It's meant to measure how much available labor was not used in a given month. Someone not trying to get a job is not available to be hired, so has no proper place in that measurement.
Analogy: Say you're a seller of fine chocolate at a Farmer's Market. You sell out and you want to know how much you could have sold that day. You would count everyone who showed up at your stall to try and buy, you should count people who asked other sellers or their family/friends if you had any available and were told no. But would you count people who didn't go to the market or try to find out if you had any available that day? Regardless of how much chocolate you had, you wouldn't have sold any to those people.
Same thing with the labor market...if someone is no longer looking for work, they will not get a job no matter how many jobs are available, and so are not a good indicator of how many people could have been hired but weren't.
The discouraged and marginally attached are tracked as people who are likely to start looking again...going back to the analogy, these would be people who were previous customers and those who had previously expressed interest and might come back in the future. Good to know for future plans, but you still can't count them as people who were unable to buy on the specific day in question because they didn't make any attempt to, so would have bought any even if you had had enough.
Would they not take a job if they thought one available?
Sure, but how would they know if a job is available or not if they're not looking? And notice the question is what they
think not the reality.
So to do things like not count them doesn't make them any less unemployed does it?
It makes them not available to be hired in the specific month.
Ah, so if people don't think exactly as you do in relation to UE numbers they are "ignorant"?
Huh? It has nothing to do with what I think. If people say the UE rate is off because it doesn't count people no longer receiving benefits, then that's ignorance of the methodology: benefits or no benefits have never ever been a part of the calculations. If people think changing the data is as simple as the President calling BLS and saying "I want the rate to be 6.4%" then that's ignorance; if people think there's a list of everyone in the country and names can arbitrarily be moved into different categories; if people think that the rate is derived by any other means that what actually happens...that's all ignorance. Nothing to do with opinion or my thoughts. And the majority of complaints I've heard show that the person doesn't actually understand how the rate is derived, what the definitions are or why.
UE is not a measure of wealth, and shouldn't be....But this part of your statement possibly reveals much about your thinking on the matter in general.
Not really. Some of the complaints I've heard are that those not classified as unemployed should be because they or their family are suffering. This implies that the person thinks unemployment is some kind of measurement of suffering, so I offered the example of a millionaire to show that suffering or not suffering or any socio-economic status has nothing to do with classifying as unemployed or not. I can see how that wasn't clear.