A job-creating powerhouse? The way we measure unemployment can lead to misleading conclusions

Our economic plan has helped deliver sharp falls in long-term youth unemployment”, wrote the Conservatives in their 2015 manifesto. But how we measure unemployment, and what we interpret those measures to mean can be misleading, argues Monica Threlfall. She explains that percentages illustrating a proportion of the labour force are often reported as if illustrating a proportion of the entire population, leading to flawed conclusions regarding the predicaments or successes of entire age groups.