Agreed. They taught this in high school economics class--a public high school economics class. I think the article is playing into the political rhetoric. For a politician to use the Unemployment Rate as a benchmark is fine as a delta since all the U values seem to track each other if this chart is accurate: http://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate
3% of what? I would not characterize that as plummeting, but after looking at the graph you linked to, it very much looks like a "plummet".
It doesn't sound like they have a definitive answer of the cause. The data is done by survey, and missed surveys are "imputed". (ftp://ftp2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/techdocs/cpsmar14.pdf) So I strongly suspect (but cannot support) there's probably some kind of assumption of a gaussian somewhere, and of course human behavior can assume many different "forms". In other words, I think they should be providing an error rate with these numbers. The other aspect is they probably have faith in the Gaussian I suspect.
3% of what? I would not characterize that as plummeting, but after looking at the graph you linked to, it very much looks like a "plummet".
It doesn't sound like they have a definitive answer of the cause. The data is done by survey, and missed surveys are "imputed". (ftp://ftp2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/techdocs/cpsmar14.pdf) So I strongly suspect (but cannot support) there's probably some kind of assumption of a gaussian somewhere, and of course human behavior can assume many different "forms". In other words, I think they should be providing an error rate with these numbers. The other aspect is they probably have faith in the Gaussian I suspect.