Private-sector estimates of unemployment in the 1930s and the development of official labor force statistics

Various private-sector organizations developed their own estimates of unemployment and the labor force during the Great Depression because official government statistics for those measures were not yet available in most years. The modern concepts of unemployment and the labor force arose from discussions between the private sector, academia, and the government. The manner of construction for these unemployment and labor force figures is discussed, as well as why organizations came up with different figures. It may be a surprise that modern unemployment statistics in the United States only begin in 1948. After all, gross domestic product (GDP) and the national income accounts produced by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) begin much earlier—in 1929. How could the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) have only collected labor force statistics almost two decades after the start of the Great Depression?