The unemployment rate formula is :

• The number of unemployed people in the country divided by the total number of workers available in the civilian labor force.

The US Bureau of labor statistics has a specific definition of unemployed for determining the percentage.

• You must be older than 16 and be available to work full time during the past four weeks to be counted as unemployed.
• You must actively look for work during the same period, and the only exception is temporarily laid off and waiting to be called back to a specific job.

Unemployment Rate=Unemployed/Civilian Labor Force

There are three main steps to measuring inflation:

• Provide a weighting to the importance of different goods to typical baskets of goods.
• Measure change in prices
• Convert into the index-multiplying by the weighting price change.

Household Expenditure Survey

• Measures what people spend their money on.
• Help find out typical consumption patterns, the statistics body can create a typical basket of goods.

In the United States, the categories of goods and services can be:

• Education
• Restraunts and Hotels
• Communication
• Water
• Electricity,etc.

These baskets of goods should be updated yearly. To calculate inflation, you multiply the weighting of good of the x the new price index and then combine all the new price changes.

Seasonally Adjusted

• THE INFLATION INDEX CAN ADJUST FOR SEASONAL CHANGES IN PRICE

Adjusting for Quality

• Measuring inflation is how you measure the price every year; the quality increases.

Inflation measures consider the types of goods may change, so every price increase may not be inflationary but changing goods.

Link: Measuring Inflation - Consumer Price Index - Economics Help

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