Jobless Rate to Be Unveiled Today Will Reflect Revamped System : Statistics: New figures are expected to reveal a higher percentage out of work. Women in particular were being undercounted.

The nation’s overhauled system for gauging unemployment--a method expected to boost official jobless rates--will turn out its first figures today when the Labor Department releases employment statistics for January.

Both government and private economists say the revamped approach will provide a more accurate picture of the U.S. job market. Among its drawbacks, the old format undercounted the number of women in the labor force and the percentage of women unemployed, economists say.

But the new system and other statistical revisions are making their debut amid concerns in the Clinton Administration that the statistics will be misinterpreted as a reflection of a worsening job market.

Government officials estimate that monthly jobless rates in 1993 would have been, on average, more than half a percentage point higher if the revised procedures had already been in effect. For example, the U.S. jobless rate of 6.4% reported for December probably would have been 6.9% to 7.0% under the new approach.

Experts note, however, that the gap between the old and new formats will vary from month to month and will not always be half a percentage point. That will make accurate comparisons between 1994 and previous years difficult if not impossible.

Administration officials have made a major effort in recent days to head off potentially misleading news reports about the new unemployment numbers. On Thursday, that effort kicked into high gear, with senior officials calling reporters about the revisions.

“We’re all just calling around to everybody to make sure they understand the changes,” said Laura Andrea Tyson, the head of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

“The new survey will be much more accurate, but obviously those numbers can be used in all sorts of ways,” she said. “We want people to understand it’s an improvement, a technical correction.”

The government has long compiled unemployment figures by surveying about 60,000 households nationally every month, including 4,550 throughout California and 1,888 in Los Angeles County. But now government interviewers will ask more questions, and officials say the questions raised will be more precise and less gender-biased.

For example, under the old system, men and women were asked different questions about what they did the week prior to the survey. Men were asked whether they were working or doing something else, while women were asked if they were keeping house or doing something else.

That approach toward women “has a Norman Rockwell ring about it, with Mom serving dinner wearing her apron,” said labor economist Audrey Freedman, who heads a committee of business experts that advised the Labor Department on its revisions.

Under the new system, men and women alike are asked simply, “Last week, did you do any work for pay or profit?”

In another change intended to improve accuracy, government interviewers will use computers rather than paper questionnaires. The computers will aid interviewers by providing appropriate follow-up questions.

Starting today, the government figures will also reflect revisions that take into account population changes identified by the 1990 census. Among other things, those revisions are supposed to remedy the previous undercounting of Latinos in the work force.

California’s jobless rate is, like the national rate, expected to rise somewhat more than half a percentage point as a result of the revisions. The state rate was reported as 8.7% for December.

Also expected to rise are figures for Los Angeles County, which are released at the same time as the national and state numbers, and figures for other California counties, which come out several weeks later.

Even with the changes, private economists say serious weaknesses remain in the data. They say the jobless rate will continue to rise in many cases when the economy is actually improving.

That occurs because more people start looking for work when they sense that their opportunities are better.

Times staff writer David Lauter in Washington contributed to this report.