How to measure "unemployment rate"?

First comment at (The Atlanta Fed's macroblog)
http://macroblog.typepad.com/macroblog/2008/12/higher-unemploy.html

A data point on the unemployment measure:

For the fourth quarter of 2004, according to OECD, (source Employment Outlook 2005 ISBN 92-64-01045-9), normalized unemployment for men aged 25 to 54 was 4.6% in the USA and 7.4% in France. At the same time and for the same population the employment rate (number of workers divided by population) was 86.3% in the U.S. and 86.7% in France.

This example shows that the unemployment rate is 60% higher in France than in the USA, yet more people in this demographic are working in France than in the USA.

Do you know of anyone working on this "discrepancy"?

Thanks in advance,

Laurent

Posted by: Laurent GUERBY | December 22, 2008 at 08:50 AM