Small Area Estimation of Unemployment Rate for the Economically Active Population Survey

In the Korean Economically Active Population Survey(EAPS), the sample sizes for small areas are typically too small to provide reliable estimators because the EAPS has been designed to produce unemployment statistics for large areas such as Metropolitan Cities and Province. In this study, we consider the synthetic and composite estimators for the unemployment rate of small areas, and apply them to real data on Choongbook province which is from the Korean EAPS of December 2000. The mean square errors of these estimators were estimated by the Jackknife method, and the efficiencies of small area estimators were evaluated in terms of the relative standard errors and the relative root mean square errors. As a result, the composite estimator is much more efficient than other estimators and it turns out that the composite estimator can produce the reliable estimates of the unemployment rate of small areas under the current EAPS system.