'Lazy and Misleading' reporting of unemployment rate

I must say, that I had not given much thought to the way the figures were being interpreted by the media until I read the following on Saturday.

It's probably a negative perception that we could do without, if we want to attract foreign direct investment here.

PS: Can anyone persuade the media to abandon the lazy and misleading tendency to treat our Live Register figures as a measure of unemployment – despite the fact that every month the data includes the statement that: “The Live Register is not designed to measure unemployment”.

Last December the media was brandishing Live Register data to claim that unemployment then exceeded 275,000 – at a time when the internationally recognised unemployment figure was 170,000. The difference between these figures is accounted for by part-time seasonal and casual workers.

Garret Fitzgerald - Irish Times - 4th April 2009