[HN Gopher] America's True Unemployment Rate
___________________________________________________________________
America's True Unemployment Rate
Author : jbegley
Score : 351 points
Date : 2020-10-20 12:16 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| egberts1 wrote:
| To be counted as unemployed, you must be engaging in job search.
|
| In all other cases, the individual must have been engaged in at
| least one active job search activity in the 4 weeks preceding the
| interview and be available for work (except for temporary
| illness) in order to be counted as unemployed.
|
| Otherwise, you're just idle.
|
| That's why we have various unemployment indexes such as U1, U3,
| U5 and U6.
|
| Me think the author of article is conflating various terms.
|
| https://www.thoughtco.com/statistical-measures-of-unemployme...
| gd1 wrote:
| FACT CHECK FALSE:
| https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/jun/16/donald-tru...
|
| Ahahahahahahhaahahahhahahahah
| supernova87a wrote:
| I am surprised that they don't show the unemployment rate as a
| map. I am sure that the rural / coastal unemployment rate is a
| strong driver of why political disagreements are so divided in
| the last decade.
| zalkota wrote:
| Vote blue and it'll continue to be high.
| CoffeeDregs wrote:
| Commenters are arguing about U-3 versus U-x but the question is
| really: how should our population think our economy is doing? The
| rhetoric on the news since 2008 has been: oooh, look at those low
| unemployment numbers! But reality doesn't seem to have matched
| the claim that low-unemployment-means-people-are-doing-well...
| Unemployment was near record lows _and_ wages weren 't increasing
| much (even with a suitable time lag)? Whatever measure we're
| currently using, it doesn't seem to be serving the population
| well. Certainly is serving politicians well. How is labor force
| participation down so much over 20 years if we're doing so well?
|
| (As raised in the comments, it's good to use universal-ish
| standards so that countries are comparable.)
|
| And I'm not classic "liberal" or "progressive" (I lean (proper,
| not movement) conservative). This is intended to portray a fairly
| balanced view of BLS stats...
| jackfoxy wrote:
| If I were ever to return to being a news junky, axios.com would
| be at the top of my source list.
|
| Notice the objective to the point layout, and link to the data
| source. My only quibble is axios did not link directly to the
| white paper explaining the methodology, but that link is
| prominent on the linked page. So, 2 clicks away from the
| explanation of the numbers. Much better than the vast majority of
| articles, whether MSM or blogger, that get thrown around as
| _evidence_ for this or that.
|
| As has been pointed out, the article title is rather _click-
| baity_. No information source is perfect...and it is all
| narrative.
| gregwebs wrote:
| The other important number that is manipulated is inflation
| (CPI). When you add the manipulation of inflation and joblessness
| together along with encouraging financial asset bubbles you can
| pretend to have a great economy when there is actually a
| recession or even depression. [1]
|
| The government has every incentive to manipulate the CPI: it even
| reduces their social security payouts.
|
| [1] https://www.georgegammon.com/will-there-be-a-great-
| depressio...
| burlesona wrote:
| I don't know that the government excessively manipulates the
| CPI, given it shows constant steady inflation since the
| 1950s[1].
|
| My sense is merely that the metric is focused on "cost to
| survive" measures and does not reflect the changes in "cost to
| thrive." Food, clothing, transportation, and technology are
| actually getting cheaper over time. But it's hard to care when
| housing, education, and healthcare costs are skyrocketing.
|
| Also, as a footnote, I was interested to read the article you
| linked, but I seriously distrust any information presented as a
| video under the headline "shocking answer revealed!"
|
| 1: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL
| C1sc0cat wrote:
| You can manipulate it by deciding what's included and by
| using reduction in costs of say big flat screen TV's over
| time.
| thehappypm wrote:
| "If you measure the unemployed as anybody over 16 years old who
| isn't earning a living wage, the rate rises even further, to
| 54.6%. For Black Americans, it's 59.2%."
|
| A large portion of high school students, stay-at-home spouses,
| college students, under-the-table workers, and the retired will
| likely fit into this category.
|
| I was excited about this article but it just isn't compelling.
| thoughtstheseus wrote:
| It's somewhat useful in a broader context of income and wealth
| inequality discussions.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Why do we care that people are working? There are many reasons,
| probably, which is why there are different measures. I do think
| most of these measures (incorrectly) presume that having a job
| means you have a living wage, or at least at some level, that if
| you have a job you generally don't need so much assistance.
|
| Maybe that was true at some point in history, but it is not
| today. Most minimum wages across the US are not a living wage.
| Many necessary benefits are tied to full time employment only.
| Unemployment rates with no context attached don't have such a
| strong meaning.
| jfengel wrote:
| Americans seem to have a deep resentment of being taken
| advantage of. They're not un-generous, but their generosity is
| only for the "worthy", and they're afraid that the un-worthy
| are benefitting.
|
| There are examples in this thread, where the poster personally
| knows people who do not wish to work and are somehow living the
| high life off of their taxes. The implication is that it's
| worth eliminating the program in order to avoid that; the
| abstraction of other deserving people who need it is less
| important. They wouldn't necessarily mind a system that managed
| to remove all of the malingerers, but even a very tiny number
| of them invalidates a system.
|
| As you say, we can easily afford it: the country produces over
| $60,000 per person each year. It's more a matter of fairness
| than resources: people resent a system they perceive as unfair
| to them even more than they resent a system in which
| unfortunate people suffer.
|
| That's certainly not unique to Americans, but from what I've
| seen, it dominates the thinking here more than in many other
| parts of the world. When you describe, say the UK's NHS or a
| UBI, the American mind seems to go first to "How many people
| must be abusing that system?"
| refurb wrote:
| That shouldn't be a shocker to you, it comes down to
| fairness. If you have two 30 year old males, both capable of
| work and one works a full time job, pay 1/3 in taxes and the
| other guy chooses not to work and is effectively supported
| (in part) by the guy working, is that fair? I think most
| people would say no.
|
| And I don't think it's unique to capitalism. Even in the
| Soviet Union they had "social parasites" who refused to
| contribute to society. Same with communal societies without a
| monetary system. People who can contribute but choose not to
| are pretty quickly pushed out.
|
| And I see a lot of comments on HN about paying taxes as the
| cost of enjoying the benefits of society. Even if you ignore
| the unfairness of one laborer paying for another laborer to
| be idle (even though they can work), isn't it unfair to
| society for someone to not contribute to the system they
| benefit so greatly from?
|
| And I'm not even an American.
| mLuby wrote:
| > People who can contribute but choose not to are pretty
| quickly pushed out.
|
| "Pushed out" meaning what exactly? Shamed? Debtors' prison?
| Homeless? No medical care? Left to starve? Euthanized?
| Plenty of options, none befitting a decent society.
|
| Also, fairness (which literally everyone supports) depends
| greatly on framing:
|
| 1. Alice pays taxes, Bob doesn't, Bob gets free stuff from
| the government, so Alice is paying for Bob's selfish
| laziness.
|
| 2. Alice and Bob both pay 30% of their income in taxes. The
| government guarantees all its citizens a decent standard of
| living, and so gives Bob, who falls below some threshold,
| assistance.
|
| 3. Alice is physically and mentally healthy, so she
| compounds her advantages and resources. A portion of her
| financial gains go to the government as taxes. Bob isn't so
| lucky, struggles with physical or mental illness,
| experiences personal or family tragedies, etc. He struggles
| to stay financially afloat, and can't consistently
| accumulate a safety net to weather multiple bad outcomes.
| He turns to the government for help sometimes.
|
| It comes down to whether you'd rather punish the guilty and
| innocent alike or would rather help the downtrodden and
| seemingly slothful alike. I choose to be kind, but I get
| that it's hard to act that way if you feel threatened.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| If you want to talk about what's unfair, the low-hanging
| fruit is the increasing income inequality between
| executives and typical workers [0], or the executives
| paying a lower rate in taxes than their secretaries [1].
|
| 0 - https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/
|
| 1 - https://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/news/economy/buffett-
| secret...
| [deleted]
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| If you have two 30 year old males, both capable of work and
| one works a full time job because they have to and another
| has a 10 million dollar inheritance from his family and
| wouldn't know what work is if it slapped him on the face,
| is that fair?
| luckylion wrote:
| Why not answer their question instead of reaching for
| Whataboutism?
| scollet wrote:
| They are both valid hypotheticals.
| luckylion wrote:
| Sure, but it's not a reply, it's just babbling on, hoping
| that the other person will change course to discuss
| _that_ issue instead.
|
| That's not a conversation and it certainly isn't an
| interesting conversation. It's what reddit or twitter are
| optimizing for.
| bluGill wrote:
| I care because I'm supporting them to my job. I have sympathy
| for those who can't work (or can but only minimal levels) - and
| I know a number of them. However I also know some who could
| work but are milking the system (less than the number who can't
| work).
|
| Every penny taken out of my income to support someone else is a
| penny I can't apply to my own dreams. My dreams are (in no
| order - in fact the order changes day to day): retire early,
| buy more toys, pay for my kids' education, take more exotic
| vacations. I have enough to live on, and even by US standards
| I'm doing very well, but there is always more, and the money
| going to someone else is money I work for that I can't enjoy.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| The pennies going towards our neighbors is probably
| negligible on the list of things getting between you and your
| new toys.
|
| I suggest directing your callousness towards our employers,
| who are keeping our wages down [0], as they are milking the
| system far more. It also doesn't help that a conservative
| court consistently rules against us [1], but there's little
| we can do about that now.
|
| 0 - https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2018/10/31/why-
| arent...
|
| 1 - https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cg
| i?a...
| confidantlake wrote:
| The toys and "adventures" you buy the military cost vastly
| more than what you give to those milking the welfare system.
| tolbish wrote:
| Do you consider people who post on HN during working hours to
| he "milking the system"? Are they not also freeloaders?
| burlesona wrote:
| For a simpler source of better food for thought just check the
| official participation rate.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...
|
| The article crafts a nice shocking headline, but the substance is
| disappointing. The BLS measures unemployment many different ways
| (U1-U6)[1] plus the civilian labor force participation rate, so
| the official data also shows these higher unemployment rates as
| U6, and has tracked them over time. Of course politicians and the
| media like to pick apart that data and focus on whichever part of
| it best supports the narrative they intend to tell. But the data
| is all there for all of us to see and interpret for ourselves.
|
| 1: https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm
| Minor49er wrote:
| The book "Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis" by
| Nicholas Eberstadt also points to this too. Even though it's
| four years old, it uses BLS data to show the labor force
| participation rate and how it has been gradually declining for
| decades. There also isn't a clear solution since there are so
| many different causes that contribute to the high number.
|
| The Axios article is highlighting the problem, but is going
| about it in the wrong way by conflating terms and not offering
| any further insight into the issue. If they mentioned the
| participation rate or the types of measurement that you noted,
| it would be a much stronger piece. But I want to underline your
| point that the data is available and anyone curious should look
| at it to see the trends for themselves.
| lettergram wrote:
| I don't know if participation rate is fair either. Largely
| because (a) the population is aging and is likely to retire
| (with wealth amassed and (b) this is really only possible
| because the government has started subsidizing pretty much
| everything (food, healthcare, housing, etc) either generally or
| for those "too poor".
|
| I personally know a significant number (at least 10-15) that
| exclusively live from government handouts (this is beyond
| simple social security). They have little incentive to try and
| find a job, frankly and many actively live with food stamps,
| housing subsidies, free healthcare, and just kinda bum around.
| piva00 wrote:
| > I personally know a significant number (at least 10-15)
| that exclusively live from government handouts (this is
| beyond simple social security). They have little incentive to
| try and find a job, frankly and many actively live with food
| stamps, housing subsidies, free healthcare, and just kinda
| bum around.
|
| I will be very honest: this is a very unsubstantiated claim,
| even if you know personally 10-15 people who are just bumming
| around and living on benefits that is a very small portion of
| benefits claim in society and this kind of behaviour will
| always exist. Benefits fraud is a thing, the good that
| benefits and welfare does to a society are much larger than
| the impact of fraud.
|
| Do you really believe that someone who lives with handouts
| from the government have very little incentive to get better?
| Do you believe that this almost less-than-baseline level of
| living is enough to make a significant portion of the
| populace unwilling to work? To the level where participation
| rate would become unfair? Have you ever lived on that
| lifestyle to check your assumption that they have "very
| little incentive to try and find a job"?
| phil21 wrote:
| > Have you ever lived on that lifestyle to check your
| assumption that they have "very little incentive to try and
| find a job"?
|
| Yes, I've lived and clawed my way out of that lifestyle.
| And yes, I absolutely feel most have very little incentive
| to do so.
|
| I am told these days welfare benefits fraud is something at
| some tiny fraction of less than 1%, but my experience and
| those of my friends who have grown up similarly really
| shows a vastly stark difference between lived experience
| and statistics.
|
| If you'd have asked me growing up I would have told you
| benefits fraud was rampant and the norm. Now I'm not so
| sure, but I am absolutely certain the definition of fraud
| has changed. Fraud to me and many others is "someone who
| could otherwise get a job but puts no effort into doing so
| or improving themselves towards being a self sufficient
| person" - where to others it seems more outright fraud in a
| white collar sense like claiming too many dependents.
|
| It's a difficult topic for me because the "science" so
| jarringly conflicts with my lived experience.
| Shivetya wrote:
| People vastly and I mean vastly under estimate how poor of
| living conditions many will accept if they don't have to
| lift a finger to provide for themselves.
|
| More than half our federal budget goes to aid programs,
| from social security, medicare and medicaid, to thousands
| of assistance programs. States then add to this total.
| People routinely complain that the government does not do
| enough to aid the poor but what they fail to understand
| just how much is already spent and that a good portion is
| misdirected; too much ends up as jobs programs for friends
| and family of politicians.
| bluGill wrote:
| The problem is it is hard to figure out what is required.
|
| I knew a lady (she died of old age 15 years ago) who was
| able to work 20 hours a week - not quite enough to live
| on - but when she went over 25 hours a week had a mental
| breakdown and spent 6 months in the mental hospital. It
| took many repeats of the cycle before it was even
| realized that 20 hours was her limit, but those
| responsible for her case didn't have options to help her
| because she could partially support herself normally and
| appeared able to do more.
|
| The above is but one case - probably unique to just her,
| but I know of many other unique cases each with a
| different situation. The point is we cannot treat the
| poor alike. However not being able to treat them alike
| means there will be fraud anytime someone figures out how
| to work the system.
| lettergram wrote:
| As someone who grew up relatively disadvantaged, I think I
| probably know a larger percentage of those "taking
| advantage" over the the "average" American. Further. I also
| used to volunteer regularly helping donate food, helping
| families, etc.
|
| I don't think people realize how good "baseline" really is,
| compared to even 2-3 decades ago. Just as an example, most
| people can get free housing from the state provided some
| paperwork (again I helped quite a few people, including
| family members, with this.).
|
| I actually stopped volunteering in this space, BECAUSE I
| saw it being taken advantage of. Probably 75% of the people
| I assisted were capable of working physically. Now, mental
| faculties are a bit of a different issue, only probably 50%
| had the mental disposition to work a regular job.
|
| That being said most people can contribute _something_ in
| exchange for wages. Unfortunately, many don't because it'll
| either cut their incentives there's a valley between
| maintaining life quality off the state and the minimum
| wage. You have to make significantly more than minimum wage
| to have the same quality of life in some cases. You can
| even see stories of this with the pandemic (people making
| more on unemployment, so they don't work).
|
| I'm also not arguing if it's a good thing or a bad thing.
| Just that, at least from my experience, it appears to be a
| thing. I also don't think we are collecting good data on
| this, particularly for political reasons (or incompetence).
| If we had the real stats I'm sure people who _need_ these
| programs would also be left without them (because programs
| would be cut). I really don't know a good solution. Just
| that it really should be explored, because many people have
| an inaccurate understanding (again from my experience).
| Leherenn wrote:
| I think it is really difficult to fix the issue where
| having a job is worse than not having one.
|
| If you make sure the benefits are below what the market
| more or less defines as minimum wage, then people on
| benefits are going to have a dreadful time.
|
| If you try to smooth the benefits loss, then you mostly
| end up subsidising employers. (I can reduce wages because
| the state will pick up the difference.)
|
| If you increase the minimum wage, then you increase the
| numbers of people who "can contribute something" but not
| enough to make sense economically speaking.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The GP didn't imply nearly the level of judgement that
| you're projecting on him.
|
| >this is a very unsubstantiated claim, even if you know
| personally 10-15 people who are just bumming around and
| living on benefits that is a very small portion of benefits
| claim in society and this kind of behaviour will always
| exist.
|
| I know a little under ten people who do the same. Nobody so
| far in this thread is claiming they aren't a small portion
| of benefits claims. Nobody is claiming they won't always
| exist in some number. You're the first person so far to
| even use the word "fraud" here. Nobody is even saying they
| should be cut off. People are only saying that they don't
| fit cleanly into the existing unemployment metrics.
|
| >Do you really believe that someone who lives with handouts
| from the government have very little incentive to get
| better?
|
| What good is the incentive if you don't really have the
| life skills to work towards that end. It's the same kind of
| incentive that a plumber has to start the next Google and
| retire as a multimillionaire. Sure it would be nice but all
| of these people I know are not in a practical position to
| improve their situation through work.
|
| >Do you believe that this almost less-than-baseline level
| of living is enough to make a significant portion of the
| populace unwilling to work? To the level where
| participation rate would become unfair? Have you ever lived
| on that lifestyle to check your assumption that they have
| "very little incentive to try and find a job"?
|
| Unwilling is a strong word. It's not so much an
| unwillingness in that their existence is stable and they're
| not gonna rock that boat too much let alone run the rat
| race just to get inches ahead. These people, in my
| observation tend to do under the table work or deal drugs
| to increase their income since those paths are readily
| available whereas entry points into a career are far more
| foreign to them. (And before anyone projects their own
| biases on me, I consider small time drug dealers to be
| legitimate businesses and I don't think there's anything
| unethical about an under the table wage laborer job.) It's
| foolish to expect these people to get McJobs in light of
| their options and how their benefits tend to interact with
| income and how little that would improve their situation.
| The money goes right back out anyway. The value proposition
| of constantly working harder just isn't there.
|
| These people's incentive to work a job is a lot like a
| middle age upper middle class white collar professional
| with a family and a mortgage's incentive to start their own
| business. Sure you can do it and you might make
| substantially more money doing it but it's a hell of a lot
| of work compared to what you're doing now and it comes with
| risk and since you're stable in your current situation
| you're probably gonna stay there.
|
| I'm not sure whether there's enough of these people to be
| an issue for unemployment numbers but there's definitely a
| lot of them out there (which is regrettable).
| ryneandal wrote:
| > Benefits fraud is a thing, the good that benefits and
| welfare does to a society are much larger than the impact
| of fraud.
|
| To back this up, Florida implemented drug testing for some
| welfare [1] and the cost of the testing _far_ outweighed
| the money lost via fraud. It may be hard to believe for
| some, but there are a staggering amount of needy families
| that wouldn't be able to survive without assistance. I
| concur with the article about living wage being an issue,
| but that number is very region-specific.
|
| 1 - https://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/florida-didnt-
| save-mone...
| bluGill wrote:
| The cost of fighting fraud often is more than the fraud
| you catch - because the act of fighting fraud means those
| who would commit fraud either don't, or hide their
| tracks. Thus the result isn't unexpected and doesn't say
| anything about if it is a good idea or not (which is a
| very complex argument that I don't know enough to get
| into)
| zebrafish wrote:
| I don't see how your anecdotal data can be counted as more
| valuable than BLS data backed by payroll, benefits, and
| subsidy data from employers and providers.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > They have little incentive to try and find a job, frankly
| and many actively live with food stamps, housing subsidies,
| free healthcare, and just kinda bum around.
|
| Like the sibling commenter, I find your post very suspect,
| mainly because (in the US at least) if you are a non-disabled
| person without children between the ages of 20 and 55 it is
| extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get enough gov't
| benefits to survive (at least outside of covid-times)
| [deleted]
| lettergram wrote:
| Feel free to read my other response. Generally, I agree you
| should be suspect of my statements. We should also be
| suspect if the statements you're making.
|
| The reality is that neither of us have solid stats because,
| in my opinion, politically no one wants to investigate how
| often the system is taken advantage of. Frankly, it's hard
| to determine "can someone work" is a nearly impossible
| question to answer. Instead it's, "how much money do you
| make a year" for many of these programs
| mattmcknight wrote:
| I agree, the structure of the argument in the Axios piece is
| misguided: BLS produces U6, and the journalists don't talk
| about it, so the BLS is doing something wrong (says
| journalist).
|
| The idea of a national living wage is ridiculous, given the
| vast disparities in the cost of living.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Why should it matter that cost of living varies?
|
| If you move to San Francisco, you should know that your money
| isn't going to go as far; conversely if you move to Tulsa you
| should reasonably be able to take advantage of the low cost
| of living to build up your savings. If you're residing in
| Tulsa and still only just surviving, you're not earning a
| living wage.
|
| Then there's the fact that besides food and rent pretty much
| everything we buy nowadays is nationally priced - amazon
| doesn't give you a discount for moving to a low cost of
| living area; and you don't get to pay lower taxes because
| cost of living is higher.
|
| But beyond all this, the disparities arise almost exclusively
| because of a few outliers - maybe 5% of people in the country
| can live comfortably on less than $20k/yr and less than 10%
| require substantially more; the vast majority of Americans
| are close to the average.
| closeparen wrote:
| It's tougher to say that people in high COL areas need to
| uproot themselves when they fall on hard times. Depending
| on the means testing scheme, this can actually come out
| _more_ expensive for the welfare system. Sure it can spend
| less on rent, but now that you 're 3000 miles away from
| Grandma it also has to buy childcare. Now that you're in a
| new place with no friends, maybe you get depressed and need
| mental health services. Etc, etc.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Going back at least to the Clinton administration, and probably
| earlier, every president gets accused of manipulating
| unemployment rates by using U3 instead of U6 or some other
| metric. But as far as I know, it's always U3 used between
| administrations for comparisons but pundits will be pundits,
| switching their view depending on who is in office. It's the same
| with "plays too much golf", "uses Air Force One for campaigning"
| for every incumbent, and of course "goes on too many vacations".
| Just something to keep in mind no matter who is in office at any
| given time.
| irjustin wrote:
| If everyone knows how the unemployment rate is built[0] is it so
| bad that it's built that way?
|
| No matter how you build a single number to represent a really
| complex problem (i.e. what is "living wage", what is "really
| wants one[job]"?) you'll get a bad answer.
|
| [0] https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
| pc86 wrote:
| > _If you measure the unemployed as anybody over 16 years old who
| isn 't earning a living wage_
|
| Uh, a lot of 17 year old's don't work during the school year. And
| they don't define "living wage" in this article - does that mean
| minimum wage for 17 year old's? Minimum wage for 18+? $15/hr?
| Something else?
|
| This is basically "if you take this ridiculous metric that nobody
| uses, you can get to 55% unemployment! 59% for
| $MARGINALIZED_GROUP!!!1"
| ReptileMan wrote:
| His definition of unemployed maps perfectly to the good and often
| used term underemployed - basically people that want more hours
| and money and are unable to find them.
|
| If you learn in 2020 that there are a lot of working poor, you
| haven't been paying attention in the last 12 years.
| hevelvarik wrote:
| Ok so the article points out well known deficiencies in the
| widely used definition for unemployment and presents a nation
| wide figure using a magical undefined number called the living
| wage applied against a data set revealed only to Axios on HBO
| whatever that is.
|
| So what to make of this? That the unemployment figure doesn't
| reflect the actual experience of job seeking in the USA...
|
| We know this and there's nothing in this article adding to our
| intuition.
| [deleted]
| kelvin0 wrote:
| If the current social turmoil in the US is any indication, we can
| assume a lot of disenfranchised people are currently hurting
| financially. When everyone works and has enough income to live
| the 'dream' such unrest is usually not present. As en example,
| after WWII industry was booming, and standard of living was very
| high.
|
| Not so anymore.
| asdffdsa wrote:
| Doesn't account for part-time, doesn't account for households,
| doesn't account for students. Add in "Black Americans" and voila,
| you have a run-of-the-mill lazily-written racebaiting clickbait
| pseudointellectual blog post.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| There is no true single facet of looking at this data.
|
| We already know the pandemic and the response have been
| disastrous for unemployment. If you aren't in the top 1%, good
| luck.
| messo wrote:
| This explains a lot. Anger and desperation is the only logical
| outcome when almost half the nation is living in (or at the edge)
| of poverty.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Thanks for posting. Yours is the first comment that doesn't
| futz with the definition of a term and instead considers the
| effect of unemployment on actual people.
|
| Imagine being a daddy or a mommy with no way to earn enough
| this month to bring up your kids halfway to what you were
| taught is decent.
| messo wrote:
| I have recently been watching a documentary series by a
| Norwegian musician that grew up in the rustbelt in America in
| the 70'ies [0], but moved with his famliy to Norway in his
| youth. He has been going back, visiting family, friends and
| random people and interviewed them, and it is frankly
| heartbreaking to witness the struggle the the 'average joe'
| has to endure.
|
| I'm living well below the poverty line here in Norway, but it
| is nothing compared to being poor in America. I do not need
| to worry about health care or expensive insurance. Me and my
| partner own an old but nice house with a big garden in a
| semi-rural community (15min from the nearest city), and can
| afford all the basic necessities by being frugal. In America,
| we would have lived in constant fear of becoming ill, seeing
| a doctor or going to the hospital. The idea that you have no
| real safety net to help you in tough times is terrifying. I
| can only begin to imagine the stress that goes with it.
|
| I have great sympathy for regular people who are struggling,
| that voted for Trump. They have long been ignored, neglected
| and forgotten, and I am sure many voted for him either in
| desperation or to defy the system they rightly feel have left
| them behind. People in Norway couldn't imagine how the
| American people could vote for such an obvious clown and a
| demagogue, but we have not seen the extent of the suffering
| and hardship before recently. We see the Hollywood version of
| your culture for the most part, and are shocked when we find
| out that American women actually have to pay the hospital
| when giving birth ("wtf, it isn't covered by paying taxes?").
|
| I really hope that it gets better, but am afraid it has to
| get worse first.
|
| [0]: https://tv.nrk.no/serie/uxa-thomas-seltzers-amerika
| (Norwegian language, but many segments are in English)
| nabla9 wrote:
| The article redefines unemployment to include
| underemployment.This is just one example of fudging terms, not
| trying to educate the public. Experts use difficult and precise
| terms so lets use our own.
|
| BIS has 6 different measures for labor underutilization. The
| widest is U-6: "Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally
| attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for
| economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus
| all persons marginally attached to the labor force"
|
| U-6 is 12.8%
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > A person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a living
| wage -- but who can't find one -- is unemployed.
|
| Yes, if you add at least underemployment by an arbitrary and
| probably contentious "living wage" standard to traditional
| unemployment, the number is bigger than you are used to hearing
| and sounds scarier. Of course, all the historical numbers you've
| heard are also using the traditional measure, so while the number
| sounds scarier, you'll also need to erase your memory and replace
| it with a different data series to have the right context, which
| will then probably make the current value of the new measure seem
| a lot less scary. Or not? While arguments for a different
| headline unemployment number than is currently employed often put
| a lot of emphasis on how much bigger the current measure would be
| using the proposed changes, they rarely out that current level in
| historical perspective.
|
| > The official unemployment ... also excludes anybody who has
| stopped looking for work or is discouraged by a lack of jobs or
| by the demands of child care during the coronavirus crisis.
|
| So does the definition you just presented, which excludes anyone
| who isn't looking for work, whatever the reason. Or are you now
| defining "looking for a full-time job that pays a living wage" to
| include people that aren't, in fact, looking for a job of any
| kind? But it's the relative movement not the a absolute level
| that drives most policy responses, so aside from a bigger number,
| what different actionable insight does the proposal provide? The
| article doesn't even begin to make an argument that this number
| is more useful for any practical purpose, even if it was
| coherent, which the contradictions in the first couple paragraphs
| seems to indicate that it is not.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Yep. U5 and U6 are always bigger than U3, pretty much by
| definition.
|
| You speak of historic perspective; let's try getting some
| numbers! A quick Internet has led me to
| https://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate (I'm on
| my phone so it's harder to get the original sources linked but
| I assume that's just the BLS numbers either way).
|
| They all track each other pretty well. A trend in one is a
| trend in all of them. If you want to expand your understanding
| then following the changes in something like labor force
| participation trends is probably more interesting than just
| switching among these U series.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The problem with LFPP is you need to understand age
| demographic trends, institutionalization trends (both
| positive like higher-ed and negative like incarceration), and
| some other things to extract much meaning from it. A
| demographic bulge hitting retirement age and a wave of mass
| incarcerations and a massive surge in higher ed enrollments
| all can have the same manifestation in LFPP, and all the same
| as a massive wave of layoffs without replacement
| opportunities elsewhere in the economy, but I can't think of
| any purpose for which one would look at employment
| statistics, particularly as a policy guide, where you'd want
| to treat all those things as even approximately equivalent.
|
| The fact that U-seried generally track together is a good
| thing, it says that they are indeed different measures
| related to the same underlying concept. It also makes the
| points where they do diverge interesting and noteworthy.
| DesiLurker wrote:
| I am surprised that no one has mentioned shadow stats yet. this
| is an excellent set of stats maintained privately:
| http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chart...
|
| he maintains it by following pre-clinton era methodology so its
| relatively less gamed.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| Aside from the other cogent comments about how to effectively
| measure unemployment and what that might tell us about the
| economy, this article is pretty shite.
|
| > "Axios on HBO."
|
| What does that even mean? this is literally out of Idiocracy.
| -brought to you by Carl's Junior
|
| > author of Capital
|
| First line under the headline contains a link to marketing
| material with a prominent sign-up link. gotta pump up those
| conversion numbers, i guess.
|
| > rate rises even further, to 54.6%. For Black Americans, it's
| 59.2%
|
| this is such a bullshit, zeitgeisty move. provides no useful
| info, is a non-sequitur solely for the purposes trying to ride
| the BLM wave. grab that emotional engagement.
|
| > A person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a living
| wage -- but who can't find one -- is unemployed. If you accept
| that definition, the true unemployment rate in the U.S. is a
| stunning 26.1%
|
| as others have said, the ability to not find any job and whether
| or not you are above the poverty line is a very different thing.
| muddling these two makes me strongly doubt the clarity of sight
| from the author and guarantees i wouldnt sign up for anything
| related to his opinions.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Goodheart's Law says that when a measure becomes a target, it
| ceases to be a good measure. Generally, that's because you start
| optimizing around improving the measurement rather than the
| conditions the measurement is supposed to depict. In other words,
| you start cramming for the test, rather than learning the
| subject.
|
| Half serious, half modest proposal: would it be useful for the
| BLS or OECD, or whoever, to periodically and unexpectedly change
| how unemployment is measured and calculated, in order to minimize
| the tendency observed in Goodheart's Law?
| URfejk wrote:
| September 2020 ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment is 26.9%:
| http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chart...
| mc32 wrote:
| What matters is measuring consistency across time and across
| borders.
|
| Also this ignores the nuance provided by the different numbers
| like U1 through U6 but they're mainly complaining about U3 and
| ignore the others exist at all.
| deugtniet wrote:
| I think the definition of unemployment has been contentious for
| as long as it exists. Axios is choosing to go with the definition
| of 'People looking for work or working while earning less than
| 20,000 USD per year'. The employment numbers are naturally going
| to be higher than when the definition is just 'People earning
| nothing and looking for work'.
|
| If one takes the living wage as a measure of unemployment, it
| should also include place of residence IMO. I heard living wage
| in the bay area is > 100K USD.
|
| I'm not advocating for anything and have no stake. But all these
| statistics are proxies for how citizens are doing. In general,
| hardships increase as unemployment goes up, whatever way you
| measure it. It's usually better to look at all of them jointly,
| and focus on differences instead of the absolute rates of a
| statistic.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _But all these statistics are proxies for how citizens are
| doing. In general, hardships increase as unemployment goes up,
| whatever way you measure it. It 's usually better to look at
| all of them jointly, and focus on differences instead of the
| absolute rates._
|
| Well stated.
|
| We see the same issues with GDP; people claiming it doesn't
| capture a country's well-being. This is not surprising, since
| it's a measure of economic output. But we know there's a
| correlation between economic output and societal quality-of-
| life.
|
| _In general_ , more GDP > less GDP. If you find anomalies that
| raise interesting questions (ie Canada vs US) you can compare
| other measures.
| gruez wrote:
| Relevant critique on /r/badeconomics:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/jd3p0l/axios_...
| tibbon wrote:
| I have to wonder if a better way to look at this over time would
| be instead to look at the Employment Rate. What % of people have
| employment? Maybe have a rate that doesn't even factor out people
| "not in the workforce".
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| > If you measure the "unemployed" as anybody over 16 years old
| who isn't earning a living wage...
|
| Over 16 years old, a lot of people are at school / university and
| likely "funded" by their parents. And those who work in order to
| study because their parents can't/don't help them, they don't
| obviously pretend to earn more than 20K... they work simply to
| survive while they study but when they are graduated, it's
| another story... Is it all counted as "unemployed"?
| newacct583 wrote:
| > a lot of people are at school / university and likely
| "funded" by their parents
|
| That's true only for kids of upper middle class families, and
| thus a vanishing component for a whole-workforce number like
| this. Kids of families whose parents bring home something close
| to the median household income ($70k or so) are not being
| "funded" at school in any meaningful way, certainly not at a
| number comparable to employment.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Generically, depends on what you want to know.
|
| No measure tells you everything, and measures that try
| obfuscate everything. Is it useful to know what portion of the
| population is working, what percentage of 16-22 yos are
| working?
|
| An increase in employment rate among women might mean more good
| jobs are available. It might mean that times are tough and
| women (or men) with small children need to work more. It might
| mean people can't afford to retire, or that 60+ people are
| having trouble finding a job, etc.
|
| IMO the problem is an obsession with creating a measure that
| maps perfectly to an imprecise term. "Unemployment," in the
| abstract, is not a perfectly defined thing. The measure should
| not define the thing. Measures should be used to understand the
| thing.
| albntomat0 wrote:
| I agree with you, with different reasoning. The number of
| people without adequate employment (as in, they'd take a full
| time living wage job over their current situation) is a useful
| means of understanding the economic situation.
|
| Counting a student who has reasonable expectations of living
| wage employment, post graduation, distorts that measure.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Is it all counted as "unemployed"?
|
| Well are they employed by anyone? No. So they're unemployed.
| It's perfectly valid to be unemployed while studying... but
| you're still unemployed.
| criddell wrote:
| That makes it a less useful statistic for talking about
| problems around unemployment. I think that's why the BLS has
| so many different measures of unemployment.
|
| If I had enough money in the bank to live the rest of my life
| comfortably, there's no way I'd be employed.
| gen3 wrote:
| "Unemployed: People who are involuntarily out of work
| considered as a group."
|
| I think it's misleading to classify these people as
| unemployed, since many of them choose to not work. If they
| wouldn't have had a job anyways, it skews the statistic.
|
| https://www.wordnik.com/words/unemployed
| maxsilver wrote:
| It should be.
|
| For all practical purposes, all university students should
| always show up as "unemployed" in any statistics, because they
| are -- and they'll need to earn all of that cash back and then
| some extra, at some point in their lifetime.
| ecmascript wrote:
| So why should we not include children of all ages and retied
| people as well then? They are also unemployed.
|
| The reason you don't include full time students is the same
| for children and retired people. They are on their way to
| becoming productive citizens or have done their part for
| society.
| claudeganon wrote:
| Many full time students are employed throughout college. As
| someone who attended the state colleges my family could
| afford, most students had part time employment and many
| were working full time.
| jlokier wrote:
| What about retired people who aren't really retired, they
| are just drawing on their pension sooner than they'd like,
| as a desperate alternative to employment money to lengthen
| their rental runway to homelessness? Or they are drawing on
| a pension while doing food delivery gigs on the side to top
| it up to pay for essentials?
|
| I'd suggest a useful definition of "unemployed" for the
| purpose of evaluating if there's a problem is: "needs a job
| but can't get one".
|
| That covers retired-but-not-really people, and students who
| need to work for a living at the same time but are between
| jobs. But not children, or students with enough to live on
| from their parents.
| albntomat0 wrote:
| Your definition differs from the one used in the article "A
| person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a living
| wage -- but who can't find one -- is unemployed"
|
| I expect there's value in the statistic of everyone who lacks
| a full time job (unemployment in the sense you mention), but
| a student who has reasonable prospects of employment in X
| years, post graduation, is significantly different than
| someone failing to find an adequate job right now.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Go screw yourself. I worked 20/30+ hours a week for rent and
| to eat.
| claudeganon wrote:
| > For all practical purposes, all university students should
| always show up as "unemployed" in any statistics, because
| they are
|
| That's funny because I worked the entirety of my time as an
| undergrad, as did many of my peers.
| maxsilver wrote:
| Sorry, I worked through my entire undergrad as well.
|
| I meant we should never exclude young adults from
| unemployment metrics. If they aren't employed at a living
| wage, they aren't employed, being a student should not
| "bypass" that metric in any way.
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| If they are "funded" by their parents - why would they need
| to earn any of that back? Is that really how it works in the
| US? It's a matter of course in other countries that parents
| fund the education of their children.
| creata wrote:
| > It's a matter of course in other countries that parents
| fund the education of their children.
|
| In _some_ countries. In others (such as Australia),
| students take out an interest-free loan from the
| government, and are expected to pay it back, with or
| without the help of their parents.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| Are most students funded by their parents? I certainly
| wasn't, and neither was my wife.
| bluntfang wrote:
| You can't forget the HN demographic of upper middle class
| white men who pay for their children's education. I'd say
| most young adults entering college have a loan in their
| name.
|
| Cursory research [0] says
|
| >Today, roughly 70% of American students end up taking
| out loans to go to college. The average graduate leaves
| school with around $30,000 in debt and all told, some 45
| million Americans owe $1.6 trillion in student loans --
| and counting.
|
| [0] https://www.marketplace.org/2019/09/30/70-of-college-
| student...
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| Again that is a very US-centric view. You don't pay
| 25,000$ a year for attending a university in Europe.
| bluntfang wrote:
| Thanks, HN is a US-centric website.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| The post is titled "America's True Unemployment Rate," so
| it does make sense in this case to assume were talking
| about USA. I certainly was in my comment above.
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| Fair point about your comment, I'm just trying to make my
| point based on the original generalization I replied to:
| Part of it is simply wrong even for the US (see
| siblings), and the rest cannot stand as a generalization
| for the rest of the world, which "any statistics about
| students" doesn't account for.
| onion2k wrote:
| _Over 16 years old, a lot of people are at school /
| university.._
|
| This is especially important to note given that unemployment
| skews towards younger people.
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| Students attending school are classified as "not in the labor
| force" because they are not available for work.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#ui
| vonmoltke wrote:
| Eligibility for UI is not related to the BLS classification
| of "unemployed":
| https://www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm#unemployed
|
| A college student may be considered unemployed if it is
| actively looking for a job, but does not have one. Similarly,
| it may be considered employed if it does have a job.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| Every country does things to minimise this number (that doesn't
| make it right, just a fact that I wish weren't true). I'm pretty
| convinced the UK's push to make all 18+ education a 3+ year
| university qualification was to improve employment figures for
| that age category. Bit of a long con, eg: go to uni to study
| early years development with 3 contact hours a week and once
| that's the only way to become a nursery school teacher charge
| PS9k a year for uni fees for a job that pays maybe PS20k a year.
| I know so many 25 year olds who's student loan interest rate is
| higher than the amount that is deducted from their pay check by
| the student loans co earning in the mid 30k region
| martin_a wrote:
| For Germany there are "training measures". You'll be put in
| some course for three months and by doing that you are no
| longer "unemployed". That's great for the statistics but that's
| about it. I've heard those training are not really great.
| Mvandenbergh wrote:
| I mean, sure, but why not add additional measures forever, right?
|
| I read the "whitepaper" on the LISEP website. They don't even
| bother comparing their custom measure to U6 which is the broadest
| rate internationally recognised and collected by the BLS.
| Literally, no mention. If your thesis is "current measures of
| unemployment" are not adequate and you want to convince people of
| that, you should really include what those measures actually are
| or you will look like a crank.
| em500 wrote:
| There's a good perpetual market for people peddling _secret
| shocking truths that the powers don 't want you to know_, and
| _everything is secretly much worse than you thought_ , about
| pretty much everything, AKA conspiracy theories.
|
| Economic conspiracy stories tend to be somewhat less outrageous
| than those about vaccines or Bill Gates, so the same people who
| point and laugh at people who believe the later could easily
| believe stuff from shadowstats, conspiracies around the Private
| Ownership of the Federal Reserve, or the perpetual unemployment-
| is-actually-super-high.
|
| The mundane Truth About Unemployment is that the current measures
| are relatively easy to measure in standard way without too much
| subjectivity (they just ask a bunch of people if they're
| available for work and looking for work, but couldn't find any).
| The official docs are pretty clear about what they measure, but
| they're pretty dry and don't make for good clickbait/blog/youtube
| stories https://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/cps/pdf/cps.pdf. There's no
| grand conspiracy to suppress the truth at the BLS, it's just a
| bunch of boring civil servant jobs.
| C1sc0cat wrote:
| Governments often fiddle with the definition or use other
| benefits to hide the true rate - in the UK there was pressure
| in the (1980's) for NHS GP's to put older unemployed people on
| disability to reduce the headline unemployment rate.
| beastman82 wrote:
| Defund welfare. Perverse incentives yield terrible results, what
| a surprise
| dr-detroit wrote:
| H1B foreigners have no trouble finding work:
|
| 1 Cognizant Technology Solutions 28,526 2 Infosys 21,473 3 Tata
| Consultancy Services 11,868 4 Google 10,577 5 Ernst & Young 8,893
| 6 Capgemini 8,411 7 Deloitte & Touche 8,258 8 Amazon.Com Services
| 7,705 9 IBM 7,237 10 Microsoft 6,041 11 Accenture 5,654 12 Hcl
| America 4,688
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| slightly off topic, but does Axios seem to have shifted away from
| political neutrality increasingly often lately?
| x87678r wrote:
| One thing I've noticed in America compared to Europe is that the
| top salaries pay more which allows more stay at home wives. In
| Europe a manager/doctor/tech worker doesn't earn as much and its
| more likely that the wife is also in full time employment. Its
| anecdotal so I can't be sure, but its what I see in my
| neighborhood.
| pwlb wrote:
| This is also a question of tradition and choices. Speaking for
| eastern Germany, it was very common for women to work and this
| is also a choice of living, maybe encouraged by
| independency/emancipation
| burntoutfire wrote:
| Women worked in all countries in the Soviet block, as the
| communist ideology was generally anti-family, so anything
| that weakened family ties was seen as positive. Also, of
| course by having two people per family working for the state
| (and there were hardly any private jobs, state was the main
| employer), the state can squeeze more value out of them.
| watwut wrote:
| That does not make current female employment unrelated to
| independency/emancipation, just like wester female
| employment is related to that too.
|
| That just means that contemporary woman is not seen as
| shirking her mom responsibilities when working. While the
| children are definitely seen as mothers primary
| responsibility, working is part of that. It also means that
| there is less expectation on women to be artificially nice
| or helpless and dependent compared to American stereotypes.
|
| Unlike in America, woman working is not interpreted as
| woman being anti-family. Unlike in Germany, mom working is
| not interpreted as mom failing her kids.
|
| Also, it is not like the first women stepped into Russian
| factory only after revolution. The women did worked prior
| that, obviously. Whether on rural farms in villages or in
| factories or as cleaners or selling stuff at marker etc.
| The aristocracy expected women to not work, but generally
| Russians have been poor and had to do stuff to survive.
| leipert wrote:
| Anecdotally from the generation of people that lived in
| Eastern Germany, especially in rural areas, a sense of
| community, solidarity and purpose is what went missing
| after the Berlin wall came down.
|
| I have never thought of having more women in the workforce
| as "anti-family", and will definitely research on that, but
| personally I am happy to have a more diverse workforce and
| not stigmatize men if they want to stay at home.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| > I have never thought of having more women in the
| workforce as "anti-family"
|
| In lieu of their mothers, children need to be looked
| after by professional caretakers. This weakens their bond
| with the mother. And even in the evenings, when mother is
| back from the job, she's beat and can't give the same
| level of attention to their children.
| jahaja wrote:
| There are two parents! Is it still 1960?
| luckylion wrote:
| Both parents are working, so the children are cared for
| by the state in Ganztagesschulen (Germany, literally
| Whole-Day-Schools). It's a mix of "we must raise the
| children because some parents are unwilling/unable to do
| it themselves" and necessity for average parents who
| cannot afford for one of them not to work full time.
| jahaja wrote:
| Similar in here in Sweden, but my point is to highlight
| the focus on the mother as the primary and default child
| carer.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| As a teacher, I had the great benefit of staying home
| with my toddler over the summer, and I can decidedly tell
| you that my wife was far more chipper and ready to
| provide positive attention to our son in the evenings
| than I was.
| watwut wrote:
| > I am happy to have a more diverse workforce and not
| stigmatize men if they want to stay at home.
|
| I dont think Eastern Europe is the place more accepting
| of men staying with children at home.
| lorenzhs wrote:
| It's much less common in Western Germany, and the difference
| largely persists to this day. The Economist recently had a
| good article on that, non-paywall link:
| https://outline.com/DZyckV
| watwut wrote:
| German moms less likely to return to work then Americans. Moms
| in Switzerland also have difficulties to return to work,
| although I cant find statistics now. Where I live, programmers
| earn almost double average salary, so I am pretty sure that it
| would be possible for their wifes to stay at home if they
| wished financially.
|
| Childcare price is issue too and sometimes pushes opposite way.
| Poor families in America sometimes have to stay at home,
| because childcare is expensive.
|
| Staying at home is not just function of how much you earn,
| probably not even primary. There are also practical aspects of
| "is it expected of me", "is it possible to manage school,
| activities and work" and "do I want to stay at home".
| ghaff wrote:
| The data doesn't really bear that out although some countries,
| e.g. in Scandinavia, are relatively higher. There's not a huge
| difference between Europe and the US in general:
| https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.NE.ZS
|
| You'd also really have to look at the breakdown by income
| level. Worldwide, female participation in the workforce is
| actually higher at higher income levels.
| buzer wrote:
| Additionally in some European countries (e.g. Finland, probably
| other Nordic countries as well) there isn't family taxation so
| 2 people earning 3000 a month is better than single person
| earning 6000.
| x87678r wrote:
| Good point, I thought USA was the only country in the world
| that had household income instead of individual.
| seanalltogether wrote:
| UK as well, it's actually quite frustrating since child
| benefit is based on the highest paid partner, not the
| combined income of both partners.
| epx wrote:
| And childcare costs/good free childcare availability/allow you
| to leave your job at 17:00 sharp are probably other relevant
| factors, as well.
| newacct583 wrote:
| I don't think that holds. Here's a data set of female/male work
| force ratio for a bunch of nations. The US at 85% isn't notably
| different from the rest of the industrialized world. It's a
| little bit lower than the UK but a little bit higher than
| Germany, etc...
|
| https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FM.NE.ZS
|
| That doesn't falsify your specific claim, which is about a very
| small fraction of the population (six figure salaries put
| families into the top 3% or so), but it's reasonable evidence.
|
| Broadly: you're taking a cultural point about upper middle
| class "America" and extending it to the whole society. Most
| people don't (can't) live like that.
| watwut wrote:
| Staying at home is also religion related. Evangelical and
| conservative groups (of both genders) want to have women at
| home regardless of how rich they are.
| newacct583 wrote:
| It might be, but again the data doesn't really bear it out
| as a unique thing to the US. The US looks like other
| industrial nations in aggregate.
| naveen99 wrote:
| The Arab world and india lead in numbers of stay at home wives
| / mothers. but not for long, as a lot more out of the house
| jobs for women (and husbands and fathers also) are now stay at
| home even in the rest of the world...
| [deleted]
| frankbreetz wrote:
| >> an important new dataset shared exclusively with "Axios on
| HBO." This doesn't seem trustworthy. Why not use BLS data?
|
| This makes the current economic situation look better then the
| official Unemployment Rate. When looking at the official rate it
| goes from 3.6% to 7.9% When looking at the "True White
| Unemployment Rate" it goes from about 20% to 23.6%, that seems
| far less severe. Not to mention they don't break the Official
| Unemployment up by race(this is present in the official
| Unemployment Situation Report output by the BLS), so you can't do
| an accurate comparison. All indicators can be gamed, and no
| single indicator paints the entire picture, but most people can't
| spend a lot of time comparing different numbers, and this new
| indicators seem to be correlated, so what is the point? They
| aren't normalized seasonally, that makes it even more confusing.
| They haven't strayed too much as far as the graph goes back, so
| this is not a new issue. The data from this article is suspect,
| and it gives us no new information.
| Upvoter33 wrote:
| I've often thought we need _many_ more metrics to gauge the
| economy. Wage data, actually employment, a much better sense of
| who is doing well financially. The main numbers shared in the
| news just aren 't that useful, and have allowed a lot of
| discontent to flourish under our noses, with disastrous political
| results.
| ecmascript wrote:
| > If you measure the unemployed as anybody over 16 years old who
| isn't earning a living wage
|
| That seems like it will give you a really bad number because they
| are for sure unemployed but a lot of people in the age
| 16-20something will go to school.
|
| I didn't earn a living wage until I was 22, but I also earn
| pretty well nowadays and pay a more taxes than most of my
| friends.
|
| Seems like the author has come to a conclusion before writing the
| article. A pretty dishonest piece imo. Because if you include
| students, why not include children and retired people as well?
| mcv wrote:
| Exactly. There's a bit difference between the number of people
| who want to work but can't find a job, and the number of people
| who are doing something productive that just happens to be
| unpaid, because it's going to school or something else. These
| numbers mean different things and have different uses.
| ecmascript wrote:
| The thing is, it's obvious that it is a political piece
| intended to stir up confusion and anger towards the current
| administration.
|
| When you point out the very obvious flaws, it gets you
| downvoted as well because orange man bad. HN has become a sad
| place just like everywhere else.
| smolder wrote:
| It's a sad place if you assume all the flaws in the article
| are obvious to everyone, then reduce everyones behavior to
| "orange man bad", and then complain about how it's a sad
| place.
| slingnow wrote:
| Given that this is generally place of intelligent people,
| it should be concerning that they didn't pick up on the
| fact that the article is quite obviously using a massive
| portion of the population to inflate their argument
| (16-20 year olds). This is likely the effect of the
| argument fitting in with everyone's preferred narrative.
| rexreed wrote:
| The stats cited in this article are headline-worthy but they
| don't make much sense.
|
| If you think about what employment means in the context of labor
| and wage earning, until the early 1900s, most in America would
| now be counted as unemployed, since they were rather "employed"
| in agriculture and domestic work, neither of which would be
| counted as a living wage today. In addition, most women, a large
| part of today's workforce, did not actively participate in the
| labor pool (looking for full-time employment as the BLS cites for
| employment), however that drastically changed in the 1960s and
| onwards.
|
| As such, the current definition of employment is rooted in the
| realities of where employment was in the early 1900s. Today's
| definition might not jive with what the Axios article is stating,
| but what the Axios article is stating is not really about
| Employment, but rather about Income generation.
|
| The notion of generating income must be separated from the idea
| of full-time employment. In the gig economy, side hustle world,
| most gig workers would not be counted in the employment rolls. As
| such, do the employment numbers matter and do we need something
| distinct to measure what Axios is stating here, which has more to
| do with income earning than full time employment?
| acruns wrote:
| Agreed, I am a freelancer making six figures married and my
| wife hasn't worked since we were dating. So according to their
| definition my wife is unemployed, not making a "living wage"
| and so am I. This is a perfect example of why I pay little
| attention to the news. They or their editor must have known
| this was bs but decided to publish it anyway for the clicks.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| What? No, not at all. According to the definition of the
| article you aren't included because you aren't looking for a
| job.
| rexreed wrote:
| Exactly. What is currently touted as an Unemployment number
| should be renamed: "% of those who are seeking full-time
| employment but not currently full-time employed". Perhaps
| "Unfulfilled Job Seekers" might be a better term than
| "Unemployed".
|
| The other measure should be "% of working age Households
| where household income is not at or above average living wage
| adjusted by region". Then that is a measure of income and
| poverty and not a measure of "who has a full time job"
| guerby wrote:
| When I looked at this a while ago I selected the male 25-54
| years old population to remove situations like the one of
| your wife, schooling, and retirement.
|
| Graphs are a bit old:
|
| http://guerby.org/blog/index.php/2010/01/31/211-larry-
| summer...
| nradov wrote:
| Whose definition are you referring to? The official BLS
| unemployment statistics only include people who are actively
| looking for work, so they wouldn't count your wife as
| unemployed.
| qw3rty01 wrote:
| The article's definition
| acruns wrote:
| qw3rty01 is correct, the articles definition.
| cik wrote:
| Felix Salmon has always been a pleasure to read. If you like his
| writing, you might enjoy him on the Slate Money podcast.
| https://slate.com/podcasts/slate-money
| brighton36 wrote:
| Goodhearts law
| Miner49er wrote:
| From the whitepaper:
|
| "Furthermore, LISEP calculates the "True Rate of UnemploymentOut
| ofPopulation", using the same statistical definition of True Rate
| of Employment, but instead taking this number from the entire
| working-age population (aged 16+) rather than the BLS-defined
| labor force."
|
| So am I right that this includes retirees, college students, kids
| still in high school, stay-at-home parents, etc? Doesn't seem
| super useful.
| tc313 wrote:
| > the true unemployment rate in the U.S. is a stunning 26.1%
|
| A look at the chart in the article contradicts the "stunning"
| element: It seems that this measure has been in the mid-to-high
| 20%s for at least two decades. So, while this number might inform
| certain policy decisions, it doesn't appear to be far outside the
| norm.
| em500 wrote:
| Yeah, but an article that just states that about 20% of the
| employed earn less than 20k/year (which is _all_ that this
| article amounts to) is not going to get as many clicks, shares
| and HN comments.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > A person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a living
| wage -- but who can't find one -- is unemployed. If you accept
| that definition, the true unemployment rate in the U.S. is a
| stunning 26.1%
|
| But they actually _measured_ "isn't paid a living wage" (by their
| definition), and just _assumed_ "looking, but can't find one".
| That assumption is absolutely false - high school kids, college
| kids, independently wealthy, non-working spouses, and retired
| people. The article's methodology doesn't implement their
| definition. The conclusions are therefore worthless by their own
| standard.
| didibus wrote:
| Why we care about employment metrics anyways? Seems we should
| just be measuring people's revenu adjusted to their current
| geography.
|
| Though I would argue against the adjustment for geography. It
| holds true when we're talking about day to day expense, like
| rent, but generally doesn't when we're talking about life
| expenses like healthcare. At least we need to be careful how we
| adjust for geography. If we consider someone is able to pay rent
| and eat, that seems not good enough, it should also adjust for:
| and they'd be able to afford cancer treatment and sending
| children to university as a minimum.
| talkingtab wrote:
| It is concerning that the top comment on this article is an
| attempt to divert the argument from the substance and
| implications of the article to numbers. It is the equivalent of
| responding to a statement that "the ship is sinking" with a
| detailed analysis of the technique to measure the depth of water.
|
| The truth is not a number, but a fabric of information. There
| have been frequent articles describing the large number of
| layoffs due to the pandemic, and a number of articles reporting
| that a substantial number of Americans cannot afford an
| unexpected bill of $300.
|
| If you are one of the fortunate people who make a living wage as
| defined in the Axios article you might well consider what it
| means if in fact half or more of the people around you do not.
| Aunche wrote:
| I'd trust the article more if I were confident that it wasn't
| an attempt to sell another ship that may or may not have more
| holes than the current one.
| slingnow wrote:
| The problem is the article isn't reporting a fabric of
| information. The article even calls their metric the "True
| Unemployment Rate". The name of the metric alone should give
| you pause when the situation is as complex as it is.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| How do you know the "ship is sinking?" What unemployment number
| is necessary such that the ship is not sinking?
|
| This article admits that the true number has been relatively
| much higher for nearly the entire history that unemployment has
| been measured by the federal government.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| The problem with unemployment numbers is that you only
| realize that the ship was sinking after the fact. The exact
| line of percent unemployment (and length of unemployment) at
| which a society falls apart isn't a known factor.
| tasuki wrote:
| As of right now, _your comment_ is the top comment on this
| article. If you want to reply to someone 's comment, why not
| just reply to it?
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| The point I've always taken away from the US's faniciful
| unemployment numbers is that the USG could be doing A LOT more
| research in this area, but instead chooses not to. The
| Department of Labor, or some other government agency, could
| publish many different metrics that explore the issue of
| unemployment in many different ways. Because like any social
| phenomenom, there are lots of different ways to slice this pie.
|
| Instead the USG deliberately chooses not to, because they don't
| want the issue of unemployment explored. Congress could mandate
| that unemployment metrics be gathered in dozens of different
| ways, with dozens of different definitions for what it means to
| be unemployed. But they don't. This is the point, and really
| the only point that matters.
| alistairSH wrote:
| That's patently false. The government has an array of
| measurements, all public.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
|
| I would argue the number they report to press is the wrong
| one (U-3 vs U-5 or U-6), but a single figure is used for
| consistency and ease of consumption.
| josalhor wrote:
| I think a lot of contention in the comments would have gone away
| if, instead of calling it "True Unemployment Rate", Axios had
| chosen a different term.
|
| "Dependent Rate" may have been a good alternative?
| impalallama wrote:
| >To be classified as employed for LISEP's true employment
| concept, an individual must either have a full-time job (35+
| hours per week) or have a part-time job and no desire for a full-
| time job (e.g., students). The second stipulation is that an
| individual must earn at least $20,000 annually. This annual wage
| is adjusted for inflation, calculated in 2020 dollars. ($20,000
| is chosen based on the U.S. poverty guidelines put out by the
| Department of Health and Human Services, which considers a three-
| person household to be in poverty if it has an income of less
| than $20,000 per year).
|
| I have still more questions but here is more details on their
| methodology and details for things like self-employment.
| https://assets.website-files.com/5f67c16a6ca3251ecc11eca7/5f...
| Looks pretty grim and I can't say I disagree.
| lstroud wrote:
| It's ironic how folks waffle back and forth on the value of
| underemployment as political seasons change.
| BunsanSpace wrote:
| Unemployment is just one of several metrics which need to be
| viewed together to get a proper picture.
|
| Labour participation, Unemployment, underemployment, e& need to
| be considered at the same time.
|
| low unemployment, but low labour participation? -> people have
| stopped bothering to look for a job not good. low unemployment,
| but high underemployment? -> people are desperate and looking for
| anything, not good either.
| mountainb wrote:
| This is phrased in a very deceptive way. There are lots of issues
| with the 'Unemployment' metric. It is indeed a deceptive metric.
| However, it is deliberately misleading to append 'True' to
| 'Unemployment Rate' with a custom definition intended to make an
| argument. You are stacking confusion on confusion instead of
| clarifying. If you want to create a different metric around a
| 'living wage,' then it should be defined in a way that makes that
| more clear.
|
| There are also serious regional differences in what such a wage
| might be. $2000/month is enough to live comfortably with a
| personal car in low cost of living regions. In NYC it means you
| are probably stacked into a decaying apartment with many other
| people with no car.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| I think the problem that Unemployment has been a Key
| Performance Indicator for government that has now been
| completely gamed by the government to the point of being
| useless as an indicator.
|
| I don't think that trying to come up with an improved metric
| which highlights the real situation on the ground is
| 'deceptive'.
| fizixer wrote:
| FTLW Unemployment Rate (FTLW: full-time living wage).
|
| Done. Wasn't that hard.
|
| Now let's not get carried away with dodging the issue, and get
| back to the topic of real deception, happily perpetuated,
| treated as gospel, by the powers that be, since time
| immemorial.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| IMO labor participation rate is a better, existing, metric for
| understanding what is happening with labor, cross racially.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...
|
| You can see that starting 2013 and continuing on even under
| trump African American + Latinx labor force participation has
| made relative gains compared to White+Asian. I believe this is
| why some claim that Trump has been good for African Americans,
| though really the trend started under Obama. (And I'll concede
| who knows what really is the causal factor...)
|
| https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...
|
| IMO Labor Participation Rate is also useful because it helps
| illustrate what percentage of the population is bearing the
| labor load of the society.
| jonas21 wrote:
| I generally agree with you, but in this particular case, they
| defined "living wage" very conservatively as $20,000/year [1],
| which is $1667/month or $9.62/hr assuming a 40-hour week.
|
| So, if anything, I'd say it's low-balling the number.
|
| [1] https://www.lisep.org/
| exotree wrote:
| 2000 a month is really tight, even if you live in some of the
| cheapest rural towns in America. If you have a family, it's
| poverty wage.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| $2000/mo take home in a cheap area is great. $2000 gross is
| going to be a lesson about taxes.
| wiether wrote:
| > $2000/month is enough to live comfortably with a personal car
|
| Weird how you assimilate living comfortably and having a car.
| AQXt wrote:
| > $2000/month is enough to live comfortably with a personal car
| in low cost of living regions. In NYC it means you are probably
| stacked into a decaying apartment with many other people with
| no car.
|
| It's funny how many Americans conflate "living" with the
| possession of a car...
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >It's funny how many Americans conflate "living" with the
| possession of a car...
|
| It's funny how out of touch many non-Americans (and to a
| greater than one would think extent, upper middle class
| Americans who live in a few select cities) are with the
| realities of day to day life in most of the US.
|
| Except in a few select areas where transit is very good and
| the cost of owning a car is very high owning your own
| personal means of transportation goes hand in hand with a
| major quality of life improvement and it compounds your
| relative earning potential (by giving you more flexibility to
| work more lucrative jobs or reduce cost of living).
|
| There's a reason it comes third after shelter and employment
| in the list of things you get as soon as you're out of jail
| (or a coma).
| horsawlarway wrote:
| What's your point?
|
| Outside of a very small number of major metro areas, cities
| in America are not livable without a car.
|
| And I say that as someone who really, _really_ despises how
| required car ownership is, and who has spent a lot of time
| trying to find alternatives.
|
| Even in reasonably large metro areas where there is a decent
| bus system, and a passable metro (Atlanta, in this case) a
| nice E-bike is still nowhere near enough to replace my car.
|
| I've managed to replace the car for my daily commute with a
| ~40 minute Marta ride, and an additional 20 minutes on the
| bike (Would be an additional 40+ if I used the buses), but
| the metro doesn't come within 20 miles of either of my
| parents houses, nor does it get me to my brother who lives in
| Athens, GA. Nor does it get me anywhere close to my
| grandparents. I wouldn't have been able to visit my now wife
| while dating without a car.
|
| I'm assuming you're not American, but if you haven't visited
| for a while, I suspect you're just wrong about any sense of
| scale you might have. Atlanta alone has a metro area of 8400
| square miles. Houston is 10,000 square miles.
|
| My wife's family has this problem. They're from Taiwan. When
| I first visited they warned me about a long car ride to see
| some family in the country. Long meant 40 minutes.
|
| 40 minutes barely gets you across Atlanta. 2 hours gets you
| to Athens if traffic is decent. 2 hours 30 minutes the a
| different direction will get you to my family in north GA
| (and Atlanta is already well in the north half of GA). I can
| drive south at 80 mph for 4 freaking hours and still be in
| GA.
| KevinAiken wrote:
| I live in Metro Atlanta (midtown) without a car, and I
| don't find it too bad. I'm walking distance from work and
| various amenities. Grocery delivery and Lyft makes it a
| whole lot easier, and the ~150$ a month saved not owning a
| car gets you a lot of Lyft, or a rental car if needed.
|
| Camping and visiting family is definitely a bit tricky
| though.
| spdionis wrote:
| You have to realize, using miles to convey the "sense of
| scale" to non-Americans is ironic because... we can't be
| bothered to understand how much 10000 square "miles"
| actually is.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| Not all non-Americans are daunted by the effort of making
| a single Google search.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| If it helps, the London metro is ~3200 square miles, and
| has more than twice the population of Atlanta (14 million
| vs 6 million).
|
| Paris is ~4600 square miles with 13 million pop.
|
| Berlin's full metro is actually comparable. It's about
| 11,000 square miles, but it's also nearly 1/10th of ALL
| of Germany.
| ovi256 wrote:
| For those with high school math ability, it's doable to
| notice that 10000 sqm is the area of a square with side
| 100 m, so about a patch of 160 km by 160 km.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Swap miles for km. It's about the same for arbitrary
| vastness.
|
| Well under an order of magnitude off.
| wiether wrote:
| > Outside of a very small number of major metro areas,
| cities in America are not livable without a car.
|
| I guess NYC is one of the "very small number of major metro
| areas" and yet OP used it to show how you can't live
| comfortably without a car if you make $2k/month.
|
| I understand how it can be a necessity to have a car, but
| we are talking about living, so before a car you need a
| roof, food, water, healthcare and heating. Based on what
| I've seen those last few months, there are (a lot of)
| people that owns a car but don't have a roof or can't buy
| food or can't have healthcare. So to me it's really weird
| to link "living comfortably" and "having a car".
| phil21 wrote:
| I think you're talking past each other.
|
| > So to me it's really weird to link "living comfortably"
| and "having a car".
|
| It depends on where you live. In the vast majority of the
| US, you simply cannot "live comfortably" without a car.
| You will be locked in your house/apartment unable to
| really do much other than get Amazon and some chain store
| food delivery options. There simply isn't infrastructure
| available for not having a car to be an option. In these
| areas, a car is worth more than a roof over your head if
| you still need it to get to work and other engagements.
|
| In the few major cities in the US where you don't need a
| car - expenses are crazy. Chicago is considered cheap for
| a major US city, and is one of perhaps 3 to 6 cities you
| could say you don't need a vehicle to live in. Even here,
| you are spending considerable amount of money to be in a
| decent neighborhood within comfortable walking distance
| to reliable mass transit. You trade your $300/mo car
| payment for at least that much more in rent.
|
| Cars are unfortunately a "good deal" in most of the US.
| They are incredibly cheap compared to many areas of the
| world, and the vast majority of our population requires
| them to economically sustain themselves. Very few times
| does the math work out in the other direction - a $3500
| beater car is pretty cheap to maintain when it enables
| you to pay $1500/mo less in rent if you ignore all other
| quality of life metrics.
| thegginthesky wrote:
| I can't assume where you are from but, as a non-American who
| lived in distinct parts of the US, I can tell you a bit about
| why a car is essential for living to many Americans.
|
| Firstly, the US is different from many parts of the world.
| Not only it's massive, but swaths of American urbanization
| are shaped around cars as a basic necessity, especially with
| the adoption of suburbs. Most of the US outside of big cities
| are car-first towns both in infrastructure, planning, and
| services.
|
| In turn, having a car for many Americans is more than an
| efficient way to get around, it is the only way to move
| safely and reliably.
|
| Many parts of the US have no public transportation, no
| reliable ride-sharing, no safe way to bike (both the roads
| and the culture are hostile towards cyclists).
|
| For more information, I'd suggest reading on the phenomena
| called "Automotive city"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_city
| alkonaut wrote:
| It's mostly self-fulfilling too: "No one wants to walk to
| these stores anyway, so when we didn't build sidewalks"...
| hajile wrote:
| Europe has a population density twice that of the 48
| lower US states. In addition, roughly a third of all
| people in the US live in a mere 500 cities (if you
| account for metro areas, that number increases). Even if
| those cities had great public transit, it would leave the
| remaining areas far less populated in reality. Less than
| 30 people per square mile is very common outside cities
| with a lot of midwest states having something like 5-7
| people per square mile (or less).
|
| It may be hard for people in many places to grasp, but
| even in eastern states there are many, many areas where
| you could pick a direction and walk many miles without
| seeing anyone.
|
| Below a certain population density (likely in the
| hundreds to low thousands per square mile), public
| transportation simply is not feasible.
| [deleted]
| bsanr2 wrote:
| It should be noted that this was not an accident, but the
| result of a concerted effort by corporate interests with
| major influence in state and federal gov't via professional
| connections and their control of the labor market. This not
| only involved the dismantling of existing, car-agnostic
| infrastructure - clearly, as most major American cities
| existed and were designed to provide for the needs of its
| residents before the existence of the automobile - but also
| represented yet another chapter in the history of collusion
| between private and gov't entities in the interest of
| maintaining America's toxic race and class order.
| bottled_poe wrote:
| I would be interested in reading more about this topic if
| you have any recommended references?
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Check out "The War on Cars", it's a fantastic podcast:
| https://thewaroncars.org/
| benplumley wrote:
| The history and politics of this shift were discussed
| quite thoroughly in Happy City by Charles Montgomery:
| https://thehappycity.com/the-book/
| nullstyle wrote:
| I'm not the GP, but I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_Am... might be a good fit if
| you're interested in this arena.
| Anon1096 wrote:
| >most major American cities existed and were designed to
| provide for the needs of its residents before the
| existence of the automobile
|
| Most major American cities that existed before the car
| still have public transportation. NYC is a prime example
| of somewhere you can live without a car. Most other
| cities still have functioning bus systems, though not
| great.
|
| It's the suburbs where you really need a car, and the
| development of suburbs was spurred in large part by the
| car. So you have your historical order wrong.
| rhino369 wrote:
| Maybe that explains cities that were dense and got less
| dense.
|
| But mostly it's the suburbs and small towns where cars
| are totally necessary. Those areas were settled less
| densely because everyone already had a car. They never
| had subways and bus routes.
|
| Are there any first world cities that substantially grew
| in area since 1920 that aren't primary automotive cities?
| confidantlake wrote:
| I am an American that does not own a car since I live in a
| city and can live without one. However, for the vast majority
| of Americans a car is a necessity. There are places with no
| public transportation and no sidewalks. The only way to get
| around is to drive.
| sebmellen wrote:
| In many regions of the US, it's a simple necessity to have a
| car, just as it might be in more rural parts of Europe. I
| know people who work as farmers in the north of the
| Netherlands, and a car is as essential a commodity for them
| as it might be for a rural Midwesterner.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| It's certainly not a necessity in NYC though, which was the
| example given. In most big cities in the US you're better
| off not having a car if you're poor, since cars are a big
| ongoing expense. Hell, I'm very far from poor and I'm best
| off not having a car in NYC.
| Grazester wrote:
| I think not having a car in NYC is more of a convenience
| issue than a cost issue(due to parking etc) to a larger
| degree. The assumption here is that you are not just
| barely getting by.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| It's both. Insurance and parking are very expensive. If
| you don't want to pay for parking then you need to budget
| several hours of your time each week just moving your car
| around to different parking spots.
| Grazester wrote:
| ..and thank you for reminding me I have to move my car
| this evening! Insurance is costly compared to other
| states. I pay about $1200/year for full everything
| though(windshield damaged and highway touring). A friend
| of mine was just quoted $3000/year for insurance on an
| Audi. For that I would ride a bicycle everywhere.
| dalbasal wrote:
| " _just as it might be in more rural parts of Europe._ "
|
| Even europeans often have this urban blindspot. In some
| places (eg netherlands), you may be able to live
| conveniently without a car. For a lot of places (eg >50% of
| ireland), not having a car is a major lifestyle inhibitor.
| Transport (or lack thereof) dictates a lot of your life...
| from work opportunities to whether or not you can access a
| supermarket.
| bkor wrote:
| > In some places (eg netherlands)
|
| That's because Netherlands changed the country to not
| rely on cars. It used to rely on cars, just like most
| countries. It's still far from perfect; there's still
| loads of places where there are not enough options.
|
| Car-only places is considered restrictive. Similarly,
| kids should be able to do things on their own. Seems
| nowadays kids rely on their parents to move them around.
| That's pretty crazy IMO.
|
| Any other country could do the same. Also people in
| Netherlands complained that "government is going after
| cars", etc.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Some people tried to grab my young adult daughter.
|
| Safe bet, if they had succeeded she would never have been
| seen again.
|
| Human trafficking is alive and well in the United States.
|
| Younger ones always go in pairs, and always with adult
| seeing them.
|
| Crude we were out for a walk the Other day and one kid
| was several hundred feed in front of us. Car slowed down
| and was pulling up next to her. Car pulled away quickly
| when sibling came out of bushes.
|
| May have been nothing, but still a good scare.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The population density in the Netherlands is one of the
| highest in the world, higher than any American state and
| 14 times higher than the US as a whole. So public
| transportation infrastructure that makes sense in the
| Netherlands isn't necessarily going to be practical
| elsewhere.
| apexalpha wrote:
| While you are correct the Netherlands has a higher pop
| density it really doesn't matter, for a country as a
| whole.
|
| See, Russia has a population density of 8.4/km2 (vs 33km2
| in US).
|
| But that doesn't stop Russian cities from building public
| transport. Just like how empty acreage and dessert
| wouldn't stop US cities from building decent public
| transport.
|
| What matters is not the average density of the country,
| but the layouts of the cities.
|
| A good example is NYC. According to your statement it
| shouldn't have public transport because the average of
| the country is too sparsely populated, but that doesn't
| really matter. Just like how the empty tundra in Russia
| doesn't prevent Moscow or St Peterburg from building
| public transport.
| Mvandenbergh wrote:
| Indeed. You really have to look at settlement patterns
| and not just a single scalar density. What makes public
| transport difficult in the US is that suburbs are dense
| enough that a lot of people live there but not dense
| enough to put in efficient public transport. If you drew
| a histogram of the Russian population sorted by density,
| you would find that a very large % of the population
| lived in dense local areas and a relatively small
| population is spread over the vast rural parts of the
| country. Not even just tundra, even Russia West of the
| Urals is very sparsely populated for the most part.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Also, you just have to take reality as it exists to an
| extent. England's population density is high too, but
| public transport is what it is. They can make it better,
| if they can. We can't just look at population density,
| conclude that it could be like the netherlands and
| proceed as if it is. It isn't.
|
| Regardless, reducing rural car ownership in most places
| means reducing quality of life. It also reduces economic
| well being. People have fewer employment options, can't
| access supermarkets and such...
|
| The whole approach of "make driving expensive" as the
| main policy vehicle is heartless... The actual way it
| works is that only wealthier people can drive, and that
| driving is actually important to people's lives.
|
| It's a totally different proposition in London and in the
| country. If England (scotland & Wales are more sparse)
| becomes the netherlands great... but losing your car
| without gaining regular bus routes is a genuine loss.
| People need to get around.
| retrac wrote:
| And Canada has one of the lowest population densities, a
| tenth of the USA, and yet has considerably better public
| transit (though worse than most of Europe).
|
| One major difference I noticed from the USA is that it's
| usually, at least _in principle_ possible to get from any
| point A to any point B in a Canadian city over about
| 20,000 people, by public transit, because even small
| towns often have public transit systems in Canada. (It
| might take a couple hours, though.) In many US cities, it
| 's simply not possible because there is no public transit
| system.
|
| After all, in every developed country, most people live
| in cities. Government policy and funding seems to be most
| of the difference.
| volkl48 wrote:
| I'm not sure "technically runs a bus, which may or may
| not be practical to use" is the most useful metric here.
|
| While I certainly agree there are substantial bright
| spots in parts of Canada for transit investment, there's
| also big and worsening issues.
|
| Rural inter-city transit has been getting drastically
| worse out in much of country.
|
| VIA Rail has mostly been in a long-term downward spiral
| of cuts/"service suspensions" outside the main
| Ontario/Quebec corridor.
|
| Inter-city buses aren't much better. Recent years have
| had Greyhound giving up and quitting Western Canada, and
| Saskatchewan shutting down their inter-city bus company.
| The result being limited patchwork of services not coming
| anywhere close to the kind of service that used to be
| provided.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/29/canada-
| greyhou...
|
| https://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-
| one-y...
| refurb wrote:
| Having lived in both countries, I'm not sure there is
| that much of a difference. Pretty much all the large US
| cities have public transport. The only Canadian cities
| I've seen with something close to say NYC are Toronto and
| Montreal. Getting around mom Skytrain in Vancouver is
| doable, but painful from a lot of areas.
|
| And of course Canada has one of the lowest population
| densities when you average the population across the
| swaths of uninhabited arctic. But 90% of Canadians live
| within 100 miles of the US border in a handful of cities.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Sure. It's not like roads or tracks are a natural
| feature.
|
| The problem arise when we "go after cars" without an
| alternative anywhere in sight. I'm pretty dubious of my
| government's (ireland) likelihood of achieving
| netherlands-like transport. I'm all for trying. But, the
| place to start is not by reducing rural car ownership.
| The reality is that electric cars will probably arrive
| before rural public transport... at least here.
|
| In practice, there a lot of implicit and explicit anti-
| driving laws. Many/most of these take the form of
| economic "incentives." Most affect rural people more.
| Rural locals don't have much public transport. A lot of
| these policies are classist too. Changing vehicle
| standards affect old cars more, making driving
| unaffordable to poorer people. Same for petrol taxes.
| Implicit "policies" like allowing a broken insurance
| system also results in a lot of class discrimination.
|
| In practice, in ireland, saying "you shouldn't own a car"
| is like saying you should move to dublin or "you
| shouldn't go anywhere." In cities it means "take the bus
| or cycle," but not everyone lives in a city.
|
| Meanwhile, I didn't think it's fair that to have policies
| which essentially mean "poor people shouldn't drive,"
| which many policies with a rural blindspot are.
|
| I would be totally fine with severe anti-car policies in
| the city or anywhere alternatives exist.
| rocqua wrote:
| I'm dutch, I live in the center of a big city that is
| extremely bike friendly. At the same time, people are
| surprised I don't own a car, and I've been considering
| getting one.
|
| We don't need a car here for most things. But it is still
| extremely convenient to have one.
|
| Move out of the bigger cities, and things change even
| more. Bikes are popular, and often used. But very rarely
| are bikes and public transport able to replace a car. I'd
| guess like 10% of people go without a car because they
| don't need it. At the same time, I think almost everyone
| here will own a bike for just general purpose.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Yeah I know. Most of the people who comment about biking
| and transit in the netherlands seem to miss the fact that
| the dutch story is pretty moderate.
|
| 20 year olds in cities don't have cars. 40 year olds with
| kids generally do, and a lot depends on where exactly you
| live. The Netherlands does a nice job of providing
| multiple options. The train and bus links ing rural areas
| are especially impressive, compared to what we (ireland)
| have. But... it doesn't replace cars. Cars still exist.
| People use them, just less. It's moderate.
| Mvandenbergh wrote:
| Seriously, yes. There is a certain kind of "Professional
| Online European" who loves to come into discussions and
| talk about how things are different "in Europe" based on
| their existence within the Grachtengordel of Amsterdam or
| their lives in one of the nice bits of Paris. If you want
| to know the domestic political result of that kind of
| attitude, and one that is quite related to the issues of
| who needs a car or not - the Giles Jaunes are the perfect
| example.
|
| Even in those European countries that generally have good
| public transportation, it is simply not the case that
| nobody needs a car. Many Dutch people I know who commute
| to work on their bikes also have cars. Anywhere outside
| the Randstad in NL, not having a car can be majorly
| inconvenient. In large parts of Groningen, Drenthe or
| Friesland it will be a substantial barrier to employment.
| Try living in Workum without a car. I hope you like Jopie
| Huisman because you're about to become reaaal familiar
| with his drawings as a sole form of entertainment.
|
| In France, a political elite (btw all of whom do have
| cars) imposed a fuel tax increase on a population of
| outer-suburban and rural lower-middle-class workers who
| _have_ to drive to work. Great result that had.
|
| I think this is important for Americans to understand
| because if they have pinned their understanding of the
| art of the possible in terms of what has been done in
| Europe they should understand that putting in a better
| bus system is not a panacea and that some places are
| structurally just not going to be reachable with public
| transport.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Aye. On point.
|
| A lot of this is just bad policies, and bad economics.
| Concepts like carbon taxation were intended to govern
| inter-country problems and large corporations. Applied to
| consumers, they often amount to simple regional and
| income discrimination. Country people drive more because
| they need to, and "pay up or consume less," applied is
| both heartless and not very efficient anyway. People
| drive because they need to, and prices must be exorbitant
| before these policies can eventually drive out the less
| fortunate.
|
| I don't think most europeans are that fussy about "how"
| compared to americans. Car size issues, hybrids or
| electrics are all fine.
|
| Btw, we should be having more pan-european political
| discourse. These policies are just bad, _and_ unpopular.
| The fact that they 've been "the gold standard" for so
| long is 50% lack of a decent feedback loop.
| fogihujy wrote:
| This applies to most of the Nordics as well; once you get
| outside city limits getting around becomes quite
| difficult unless you have a car. Once you get further
| out, it's simply not possible. Many areas simply lack
| access to public transport, and while a 20 km bike ride
| can be nice during summer, it's not really an option
| during winter.
|
| On the other hand, one could live in Copenhagen or
| Stockholm for an entire lifetime without actually
| _needing_ a car.
|
| I can imagine the same applies for much of Eastern Europe
| as well.
| gambiting wrote:
| Exactly - in Poland there are some regions which are _very_
| poor by any definition, and yet every home will have 2-3
| cars simply because it 's impossible to get anywhere
| without one. Yeah there is some public transport, but it's
| often very infrequent or not going where people need to be.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| I think it is important to note that this isn't just a
| problem related geography or sprawl. I live in Fairfax
| County just outside of DC. It's pretty populous (1.15
| million) but getting anywhere is still a challenge if you
| don't live within walking distance of an Orange Line metro
| stop. This assumes that the metro hasn't caught on fire
| recently or that the line hasn't been shut down for
| multiple months for repairs. Bus timetables are so spread
| out that a 20 minute drive is a 2-3 hour bus ride in a lot
| of cases.
|
| Sprawl certainly plays a part but lack of investment in
| public transport is big reason why cars are so essential.
| [deleted]
| culopatin wrote:
| I think it's because of the way the country was built.
| Getting from A to B without a car is drastically worse, and
| it adds up to a proportionally bad quality of living unless
| you happen to live in a walkable older city (NYC, Boston for
| example). In some places like Florida your nearest store
| could be 4 miles away. The bus here is so underutilized and
| so inconvenient that I don't think I've ever considered. A
| 30m drive is a 2h bus ride.
| [deleted]
| selykg wrote:
| In a lot of rural areas, like where I am, there is no such
| thing as public transportation. If you don't have a car you
| can maybe make due during the spring and fall months where
| the temperatures are reasonable. But it's going to be hell
| during winter (gets cold enough and there's enough snow a
| bike won't work for you) and during summer it gets too hot.
|
| I'm a 5 minute drive to the nearest grocery store. For a
| walk, that's about 3-ish miles. On a bike, not so bad, but
| also keep in mind there's no bike lane or anything so you're
| sharing the road with cars. There's some added risk to that.
|
| A car isn't a requirement, but it makes a massive difference
| in your ability to live.
| bboylen wrote:
| In many areas of the country it is very, very challenging to
| get anywhere without one. I don't think access to grocery
| store / work is necessarily trivial to life.
| jjk166 wrote:
| You can get a low end new car with a payment of only around
| $200/mo and buying used is significantly cheaper still. You
| don't necessarily need to possess a car, but if you don't
| have the financial means to possess a car then you really
| can't afford anything beyond the absolute most basic
| necessities. In a developed nation, that's barely surviving,
| not living.
| randallsquared wrote:
| This is yet another surprising thing to a lot of people:
| cars can be very, very cheap in the US: insurance and gas
| can cost more than a reliable used car. I just sold a
| perfectly fine car for less than $2000, having bought it
| new 10 years ago. Someone else will probably buy that car,
| after a few cosmetic things are fixed, for $3000 or so.
| It's spent most of its life south of Pennsylvania, so it
| doesn't have road salt damage, and will probably last
| another 10 years or more with regular oil changes, etc.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| a personal car is a big expense. If you can live comfortably
| in a region with a personal car then it is a significantly
| different metric than you can live comfortably without a
| personal car.
|
| Also the way the U.S is structured living comfortably without
| a personal car means you must be living somewhere where you
| can work without that personal car, which is a rare job to
| have, meaning that you can be locked into your employer. Or
| is that the funny part you're referring to?
|
| on edit: I see lots of people made my second point as well.
| cpursley wrote:
| Well, in most places in the US you literally can't go without
| a vehicle if you want employment and food. Even if you're
| physically proximate to food and other activities of daily
| living, there are often no sidewalks or paths to safely walk
| or bike there. There's also a social stigma of walking (the
| person must be poor or lost their license for drunk driving).
| bkor wrote:
| > Well, in most places in the US you literally can't go
| without a vehicle if you want employment and food.
|
| That's due to zoning laws being the way that they are. If
| you'd change the way you'd build up and zone things it
| would be possible.
|
| The YouTube channel "Not Just Bikes" goes into this in
| various videos. I couldn't find the exact video that
| explained the zoning laws, did find another:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul_xzyCDT98 (kids in
| Netherlands go to school on their own).
|
| Despite Netherlands being considered great for cyclists
| there's loads to improve. The channel goes into that detail
| as well, e.g. that major roads are being closed. See e.g.
| this video of a big road being closed in Utrecht:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fePpwYCs_JM (different
| channel)
| Frost1x wrote:
| It's an absolute necessity, it's not a luxury contrary to the
| way it may be painted or viewed externally. Unless you want
| to diverge from efficiency expectations in modern society
| needed to work a job and instead move out to an Amish farm of
| sorts, you're going to need a car.
|
| I'd love to have a viable efficient public transit system,
| infrastructure, or culture built around it but it simply
| doesn't exist for well over the vast majority of Americans.
| All other transit options simply aren't viable alternatives.
| dmode wrote:
| I believe the other rate has been traditionally called
| "underemployment"
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Throws the ordinary unemployment rate into the category of
| 'false', which I agree with. To class 'any job' as employment
| is unhelpful and greatly misleading.
|
| I'd prefer a measure of total working class income perhaps,
| maybe a ratio with cost of living. Then we'd know what all
| these jobs add up to exactly. Counting heads is hardly a 'true'
| rate of employment.
| anm89 wrote:
| Completely disagree. Yes there is some level of subjectivity
| here but the definition this article is using is muchcloser to
| the definition to what an uninformed person would assume
| whereas the traditional definition is intentionally deceptive.
|
| So no, it is not "the one true unemployment rate" but it is a
| lot truer as perceived by the average person than the standard
| definition.
| syndacks wrote:
| Yes, I completely agree with you. The top comment, like many
| top comments on HN, fails to understand the bigger
| picture/message, and instead nitpicks one thing thus making
| everything "false". It's a really, really said phenomena
| amongst this hyper logical crowd.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Reminds me of the official interest rate. I don't think it even
| goes by original CPI calculations anymore.
| nemacol wrote:
| >$2000/month is enough to live comfortably with a personal car
| in low cost of living regions.
|
| If that 2k/mo comes with reasonable health insurance and some
| retirement plan.
| ahoy wrote:
| You realize that's $24k/yr right
| oblio wrote:
| Hey, live like there's no tomorrow, isn't that part of the
| American Dream? :D
| bluGill wrote:
| Retirement comes with medicare in the US, so there is
| somewhat reasonable health insurance.
|
| > The maximum possible Social Security benefit in 2020
| depends on the age you begin to collect payments and is:
| $2,265 at age 62. $3,011 at full retirement age (65-68).
| $3,790 at age 70.
|
| While many do retire on less, they also contributed less over
| the years and so are used to living on less. However we can
| safely say that if you only get $2000/month you retired too
| early and this should have been an intentional choice -
| retire early to a lower standard of living.
| tootie wrote:
| People really get hung up on the name and I can't blame them.
| Calling it the "Employment Index" would be a better fit. It's
| only ever meant as an indicator and not to be a pat answer to
| very complex question.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I agree that there is no "true" measure, just different
| measures.
|
| That said, the standard unemployment measure the author is
| objecting to is just as (more really) disingenuous in practice.
| It also stacks confusion. "Unemployment" used as a primary
| barometer for the labour economy.
|
| People (including journalists, politicians... high stakes
| stuff) assume that unemployment captures most unemployment.
| They don't consider that most unemployed 58 year olds are not
| counted because they "retired," stopped seeking work or receive
| a disability benefit. When/if these become substantial, the
| measure means very little.
|
| Every time a journalist note record high/low unemployment of
| X%, it's probably just as deceptive or (more likely)
| misleading. The measure itself means something different in
| 2020 than it did in 1980, or in a different country/region.
|
| At least the "true" appendage makes clear that there are
| differing and divergent ways to measure unemployment, and that
| these cn result in huge differences.
| smsm42 wrote:
| There's labor force participation and it is measured. It's
| just much more complex and can not really be understood as a
| single number - people can be out of workforce because they
| are retired, because they are sick, because they are wealthy,
| because they can't find work, because they are in prison,
| because they rely on somebody else to supply their income,
| etc. etc. Probably too complex for an average newspaper
| headline.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > People (including journalists, politicians... high stakes
| stuff) assume that unemployment captures most unemployment.
|
| No, this is intentional deception. The party out of power
| talks about "real" inflation rates and "real" unemployment
| rates, and the party in power touts the official numbers.
|
| The best number to go by for unemployment has always been the
| prime age _employment_ (not _un_ employment) rate, and all
| honest discussions of the current state of employment start
| with it.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060
| airza wrote:
| This rate seems like it would hide the extremely real
| phenomenon of people being forced to work after 55.
| zdragnar wrote:
| > people being forced to work after 55.
|
| Did you mean 65? Only teachers and a few other public
| union members regularly retire at 55 in the US, and even
| for them many choose to continue working to earn a fatter
| pension.
|
| Except, of course, for the rare people disciplined enough
| to be frugal and invested a lot of every pay check, and
| became self made multi millionaires.
| makomk wrote:
| Yeah. I remember back in 2016, all the self-proclaimed fact
| checkers insisted that the official headline unemployment
| rate was the real unemployment rate, and that any claims
| about employment that didn't match up with it were lies by
| Trump. Now that he's the incumbent...
| tzs wrote:
| What's the source of the general increase from 1960 to
| 2000? The trend away from couples having one member stay at
| home running the house toward having both members with
| outside employment?
| bzbarsky wrote:
| Yes, exactly.
| warvair wrote:
| Thanks for posting this site. I was a bit confused by the
| recent dip in this chart:
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTLL2564
|
| Until I realized it's likely due to COVID-19 deaths.
| refurb wrote:
| It's a drop of 5M. 5M people haven't died from Covid in
| the US. Plus it just went up by 2M.
|
| But I am curious about that drop.
| warvair wrote:
| You're right, I was skim-reading it as a few thousands
| (and jumping to conclusions). Not sure what's going on
| with that dip.
|
| Edit: It would be interesting to compare this to an up-
| to-date graph of US deaths (all kinds), if one exists.
| nradov wrote:
| No most of the COVID-19 deaths were in the older cohort.
| That wouldn't significantly impact the civilian labor
| force.
| willwhitney wrote:
| That dip is more than 4M people, so I think it's still
| unexplained. Perhaps due to a shift in response rates or
| another artifact of COVID churn in the survey
| methodology?
| awhitby wrote:
| This is the labor force, as it says: "the sum of employed
| and unemployed persons."
|
| So it only includes people who are working or looking for
| work. This kind of distinction is the key to the OP.
|
| So thankfully the dip is mostly not deaths, but for
| example
|
| - a second earner in a household who lost a job in April
| but hasn't looked for new work since, due to child care
| commitments
|
| - a cook who was furloughed but knows there are no new
| kitchen jobs going right now, but isn't yet willing to do
| something else, so isn't looking
|
| - a person who lost a job one year out from retirement
| and is just retiring early
|
| https://www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm#nilf
| sk5t wrote:
| > People (including journalists, politicians... high stakes
| stuff) assume that unemployment captures most unemployment.
| They don't consider that most unemployed 58 year olds are not
| counted
|
| Would not "high stakes" non-dilettante observers know about,
| and review trends in, the labor participation rate and other
| metrics?
| duxup wrote:
| I feel like it is on the reader to understand that to some
| extent everything about measuring is about HOW you measure.
|
| This article is one of MANY that recognize this, and it's by
| a journalist, and I've seen politicians note it as well....
| zdragnar wrote:
| Sean Hannity talked about it non-stop during Obama's second
| term, then mysteriously dropped it when Trump took office.
|
| Basically, there are no surprises here. Everyone uses the
| numbers that favor them and hurt their opponents.
| _Everyone_.
| duxup wrote:
| I think there is a varying level of folks intent and
| awareness of their biases to the extent that 'everyone'
| isn't accurate.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| While this may be true, the article's premise that the BLS
| was somehow cooked up to hide the "true" unemployment rate
| rings hollow, mainly because the BLS _also_ tracks and
| reports tons of other labor-related statistics, including for
| example "discouraged" workers, those working part-time but
| want to work full-time, overall labor force participation
| rate, etc.
|
| These days I even see mainstream media outlets report lots of
| different numbers beyond the "baseline" unemployment rate, so
| I just feel like this whole article is written from the
| "you're not considering my preferred statistic as the 'true'
| one so you're wrong" angle.
| II2II wrote:
| Question: which figures are reported more prominently by
| the BLS?
|
| I am asking because my country's equivalent tends to report
| unemployment figures, based upon a similar definition to
| the US, more prominently. This is especially true if a
| casual seeker is unfamiliar with the terminology used while
| reporting these figures.
|
| Incidentally, it is also worth noting that one does not
| have to believe that the numbers are cooked up to believe
| that they are misleading. Having a consistent definition is
| important when comparing figures, unfortunately having a
| consistent definition also means that the reported numbers
| may not reflect societal expectations over time (e.g.
| regarding retirement or multiple income households).
| m000 wrote:
| The BLS statistics are pretty much like the food labels:
| They'll slap a huge "0% fat" sticker on the front of the
| package to appease the public conscience. But you need to
| carefully read the fine-print on the back to find out
| what's that you're consuming.
| gruez wrote:
| >They'll slap a huge "0% fat" sticker on the front of the
| package to appease the public conscience. But you need to
| carefully read the fine-print on the back to find out
| what's that you're consuming.
|
| ...as opposed to what? being "honest" by slapping a
| "contains scary sounding chemicals" sticker on the front
| of the package? how can a manufacturer possibly know what
| people would hate, considering that people can hate
| literally any ingredient?
| m000 wrote:
| > being "honest" by slapping a "contains scary sounding
| chemicals" sticker
|
| You don't even have to go to "scary chemicals" and
| conspiracy theories. Have you ever checked how many "0%
| fat" foods are heavy on refined carbs, and vice-versa?
|
| > how can a manufacturer possibly know what people would
| hate, considering that people can hate literally any
| ingredient?
|
| Have you ever heard about market research? The promoted
| cherry-picked facts are not there because people are
| unpredictable and the manufacturers are clueless, but
| because people are predictable and the manufacturers have
| researched their behaviour.
| drabiega wrote:
| BLS calls U-3 the "official unemployment rate" I guess,
| but they publish it in a table with 5 other measures that
| count different things. I'm not entirely sure it's fair
| to blame them for the fact that most people just focus on
| that one measurement.
| Mvandenbergh wrote:
| >People (including journalists, politicians... high stakes
| stuff) assume that unemployment captures most unemployment.
|
| Is that the case? A journalist covering an economic story
| will know and be familiar with U3 and U6. Maybe a local
| politician like a city council person, mayor, or potentially
| a freshman state rep in some American state _might_ not know,
| since some of them are really just used car salesmen or local
| lawyers who 've convinced their local party to put them in as
| their candidate but even then I suspect that they learn the
| conceptual if not the technical difference very quickly. I am
| not familiar with the political systems of all countries of
| course but I think you would struggle to find, say, a Dutch
| of British MP who would not know this.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _They don 't consider that most unemployed 58 year olds are
| not counted because they "retired," stopped seeking work or
| receive a disability benefit._
|
| Why _should_ any of these people be considered "unemployed"?
|
| Every time there's a discussion of unemployment, or
| inflation, people bring up the measurements as "misleading".
| The BLS tracks this stuff because people in the real world
| need to use it, not because there's some disingenuous
| political purpose. There are a ton of different metrics to
| get a broad picture of the labour market, as defined, and
| they put them out there, free to use. The idea that the army
| of economists at the BLS don't understand things like people
| being retired is just wrong.
|
| We spend a lot of time criticizing journalists and
| politicians, but how many people bother to look at the data
| themselves if interested?
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I thought I'd bother after reading your comment.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
|
| and the numbers:
|
| https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm
|
| It's actually kinda straightforward, and very clear about
| what measures they're using. The numbers are bit scary -
| "The employment-population ratio, at 56.6 percent, changed
| little over the month but is 4.5 percentage points lower
| than in February."
|
| "The number of persons not in the labor force who currently
| want a job, at 7.2 million, changed little in September;
| this measure is 2.3 million higher than in February. These
| individuals were not counted as unemployed because they
| were not actively looking for work during the last 4 weeks
| or were unavailable to take a job."
|
| So that's 12m officially unemployed, plus 7m "not in the
| labor force" but who want a job.
|
| So yeah, the article is kinda on point; that the numbers
| don't mean what they think we mean. But I have to agree:
| that's not because the numbers aren't available for anyone
| to look at and understand.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Exactly right.
|
| The reality is that "unemployment" is a highly visible
| metric. Sure, the data itself is available... A big part
| of the reason why it's important to have this data
| available is exactly for this purpose: call bullshit on
| the unemployment numbers when necessary...
|
| ...especially considering that "want a job" is measured
| in very specific ways.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > reality is that "unemployment" is a highly visible
| metric.
|
| Is it though? The photos of queues for jobs and
| unemployment benefits is something of the distant past.
| Find out that a different measure makes the rate 3x
| higher came as news to me.
| hajile wrote:
| 74.1 million children
|
| 54.0 million over 65
|
| 48.9 million on disability
|
| 328.2 million total population
|
| 185.8 million people employed at 56.6% employment
|
| 128.1 million people not employed (including children)
|
| 54 million people not employed, but marginally employable
| (max income is $1,260 per month if on disability and
| $18,240/yr when retired)
|
| In any case, under-employment is still a bigger issue
| than unemployment.
| em500 wrote:
| Yup, the occasional hedonistic adjustments and product
| substitutions that they do for CPI is already prime fodder
| for perpetual inflation conspiracy stories. It will be a
| disaster when they do even more subjective "degrees-of-
| unemployment weights".
| crpatino wrote:
| > Why should any of these people be considered
| "unemployed"?
|
| In general, because governments around the World use
| doctored Unemployment Rates to claim their economic
| policies are more effective than those really are. It is
| practically the same as Principal Skinner taking Bart
| Simpson and all the other School's idiots to a field trip
| the very day the Standardized Test is due.
|
| How do we know the measure is doctored, you say? Because
| they _changed_ it, and they have been comparing old figures
| to new figures. Sure, they put a tiny note in illegible
| print at the bottom of their charts. You know what an
| engineer does? We give the damned new thing a new damned
| name. Then in the damned chart you clearly see one line
| stops one year and then another line of a different color
| starts that very year. If anyone gets fooled by that, it 's
| because they are willfully ignorant.
|
| > We spend a lot of time criticizing journalists and
| politicians, but how many people bother to look at the data
| themselves if interested?
|
| Journalists are paid to report, and if they cannot report
| accurate figures, why should we pay them?
|
| Politicians compete to get into, what in theory is called,
| Public Service. Servers are expected to provide accurate
| reports regarding the service they are providing. If their
| reports are self serving, why should we trust them with
| anything more important than window dressing?
| clairity wrote:
| > "Why _should_ any of these people be considered
| 'unemployed'?"
|
| if you want to know how well we're allocating our (labor)
| resources as an economy, it's important to get a full
| picture of how many capable people are un-/under-employed.
|
| when we make national economic policy, it should be to make
| meaningful progress toward putting all of our capable and
| willing people (true unemployment) to highest and best use,
| not arbitrarily just those who have recently become
| un-/under-employed (nominal unemployment).
| pdonis wrote:
| _> if you want to know how well we 're allocating our
| (labor) resources as an economy_
|
| There is no single "we" who allocates those resources.
| That is a fundamental fallacy in this whole way of
| looking at things. We seem to have this belief that, if
| only our government experts could find the right
| aggregate measure and micromanage the economy based on
| it, everything would work just fine. That belief is
| false.
|
| _> when we make national economic policy, it should be
| to make meaningful progress toward putting all of our
| capable and willing people (true unemployment) to highest
| and best use_
|
| That's not something the government should even be trying
| to do, because no central planning entity can do it.
|
| What the government should be doing is guaranteeing a
| level playing field, and letting freedom work.
| Historically, times when the government has done that
| have been the times when the US economy has created the
| most wealth.
| bushin wrote:
| you sound like a religious fanatic
| clairity wrote:
| that "we" is the whole of the citizens and residents of
| the country, not a central planning committee. the
| government is the power apparatus that is meant to
| express and realize our common good. as a power
| apparatus, it cuts both ways, and we must remain vigilant
| as citizens on keeping it aligned with our goals and
| desires.
|
| wealth by itself, especially as we measure it, is hollow
| and a poor collective goal, and its singular pursuit
| expressly undermines the level playing field and much of
| our humanity. prosperity is a more holistic expression of
| our collective goal, with wealth creation _not_ being the
| principal ingredient of prosperity. industry, purpose,
| solidarity, community, well-being, welfare, success,
| esteem, respect, free expression, etc. are all (much)
| higher on that list.
|
| it behooves us to look beyond simplistic ideologies
| (which only benefit the political, by collapsing our
| horizons insidiously) to perform our duties and
| responsibilities to each other as a society.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> that "we" is the whole of the citizens and residents
| of the country, not a central planning committee_
|
| But none of us have the power to run the entire country,
| and we couldn't do it properly even if we had the power.
| So saying that "we" should do things that are beyond our
| power is pointless.
|
| If you think not enough people have jobs, start a
| business and hire some. If everyone who complains about
| unemployment went and did that, if it didn't completely
| solve the problem, it would certainly make a huge dent.
|
| _> the government is the power apparatus that is meant
| to express and realize our common good._
|
| If "our common good" just means ensuring a level playing
| field and letting freedom work, sure. That's what the US
| government was originally intended to do.
|
| However, governments today have gone far beyond that to
| try to dictate to everybody what "our common good" should
| mean based on some particular interest group's ideas
| about social policy. That is a recipe for disaster, and
| we should stop doing it.
|
| _> wealth by itself, especially as we measure it, is
| hollow and a poor collective goal_
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by "as we measure it". If you
| mean that "we" measure it in money, then of course you
| are correct: money is not wealth.
|
| If you measure wealth as economists actually measure it,
| however, by the possibilities that are open to people--
| the range of things they can choose to do with the
| resources and options available to them--then people
| today are wealthier than pretty much every human being
| who ever lived.
|
| _> industry, purpose, solidarity, community, well-being,
| welfare, success, esteem, respect, free expression, etc.
| are all (much) higher on that list._
|
| If you think these are valuable things, then go build
| them.
|
| If you think government should dictate to people that
| they need to build these things, whether they want to or
| not, IMO you are being inconsistent, since the whole
| point of all these good things is that people can _only_
| do them voluntarily; if they are forced to do them, you
| don 't get them, you get sham imitations instead. So once
| again, government should not be used to impose these
| things on people; it should be used to ensure a level
| playing field so free people can build them as they see
| fit.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Why should any of these people be considered
| "unemployed"?_
|
| Because we're actually trying to count "people who would be
| employed, were there more jobs available"
|
| But as we can't read people's minds, we can't tell the
| person who's happily retired at 58 from someone the same
| age who'd rather be in work but can't find it, and has
| started drawing their pension out of necessity.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> we can 't read people's minds_
|
| Exactly. Which means you can't count what you say you're
| trying to count. What you're trying to count requires
| telepathy.
|
| That's why economists look at revealed preference--what
| people actually do, not what you guess they might be
| thinking. So the correct way to see if there are people
| who would be employed if there were more jobs available,
| is...to let private individuals start new businesses and
| see if the increased number of jobs increases the number
| of people who are employed. But that would require the
| government to stop trying to micromanage everything,
| which is why the obvious solution of _making it easier to
| run businesses so that more people will start them_ in
| order to create more jobs is a nonstarter politically.
| refurb wrote:
| But that's exactly how the survey works. They ask people
| if they are available to work and if they are actively
| seeking work, regardless of age.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#unemployed
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| You can want a job, but not be looking for a job because
| your prior attempts to secure one have been unsuccessful.
| This is called discouraged unemployment and figures into
| the overall category of marginally-attached workers.
| nradov wrote:
| Well it's a spectrum. Many of those who are happily
| retired would be willing to go back to work if someone
| offered them enough money. As wages rise the labor force
| participation rate also goes up.
| malandrew wrote:
| > As wages rise the labor force participation rate also
| goes up.
|
| Wouldn't any such effect be temporary though? As wages
| rise, doesn't inflation rise as well, negating the
| benefit of a rising wage.
|
| Wouldn't it also be true that as certain goods deflate in
| price, labor force participation should go up as well
| since the same wage allows you to buy more stuff?
|
| This goes back to wealth isn't the money you have, it's
| what you can buy. Today most people, even those at the
| bottom, have access to many things today than even John
| D. Rockefeller didn't have access to when he was alive.
|
| Anyways, not asserting anything in particular here, but
| just raising that it seems far more complicated than just
| wages rising lead to greater labor force participating.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> As wages rise, doesn 't inflation rise as well_
|
| No. Inflation is primarily caused by the government
| printing money, not by rising wages.
|
| If wages rise but productivity does not increase, yes,
| that will cause inflation, but if productivity is not
| increasing wages cannot rise because there is nowhere for
| the increased wages to come from.
|
| If wages rise because productivity is increasing, there
| are more goods and services available, so supply keeps up
| with demand and prices don't rise. (In fact they will
| generally fall in the areas where productivity is
| increasing, _if_ the money supply is not being messed
| with.)
|
| _> Wouldn 't it also be true that as certain goods
| deflate in price, labor force participation should go up
| as well since the same wage allows you to buy more
| stuff?_
|
| There will probably be more people willing to work, yes.
| Whether that translates into more actual jobs will depend
| a lot on how easy it is to start new businesses, since
| that's where the new jobs will have to come from. Our
| current regulatory regime makes it much more difficult
| than it should be to start new businesses.
|
| _> wealth isn 't the money you have, it's what you can
| buy. Today most people, even those at the bottom, have
| access to many things today than even John D. Rockefeller
| didn't have access to when he was alive._
|
| This is a very good point, which I wish more people would
| recognize.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > people in the real world need to use it
|
| There is absolutely no purpose other than propagandistic
| for the percentage commonly referred to as "unemployment"
| with no other qualifiers. That number's only purpose is to
| start dropping a short time after an unemployment shock
| whether or not any jobs were actually added to the economy.
|
| The other numbers aren't to give a "broad picture" of the
| labor market, they're to give the entire picture of the
| labor market. "Unemployment" contributes nothing. At the
| time of a shock it echos other metrics, and after a pause
| of a few months it announces that whatever the
| administration announced its reaction to the shock would be
| is starting to work, no matter what the other numbers say.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| But the article's graph shows exactly the opposite.
| According to the "true unemployment rate", the job market
| has fully recovered from the COVID shock and is sitting
| at where it was in 2017-18, whereas the official
| unemployment rate indicates that there's still a problem.
| I assume we can agree that there is indeed still a
| problem, so it seems like the official statistics have it
| right here.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Why should any of these people be considered
| "unemployed"?_
|
| Because they still need to find work to live, pay heath
| expenses, and so on, and can barely make it in third-world
| style conditions without it...
| bluGill wrote:
| Most people retire with an income stream that is enough
| to live one. Now I'll grant that enough to live on is low
| standard of living, but it will pay for food, health care
| (most get some form of medicare), your apartment, and you
| can afford a basic car. Of course if you live in a high
| cost of living area like San Francisco it isn't enough,
| but for most of the US you will live an nice enough life.
| You can always want more, but your needs are met.
|
| Third world conditions are much worse than that. I've
| seen families sleeping on sidewalks. No car, no health
| care.
|
| Sure everybody wants more. There are a lot of retired
| people who would like a job, but that is as much about
| the social connection as money. There are also those who
| lost their money (scams target retired people) and need a
| job, but that isn't most of them.
| pwinnski wrote:
| I think the bit you're missing is that there is a cohort
| of people who _haven 't_ retired, precisely because they
| lack an income stream that is enough to live on, but they
| are counted as retired by most measures of unemployment.
|
| My father turns 70 in three days, and he has struggled to
| find long-term work for the last ten years. He'll work
| for a year, search for work for 15 months, work for
| another 18 months, etc. He would like to be working now,
| but COVID-19 probably marks the end of his working days
| forever.
|
| He's been counted as retired a few times during the last
| decade, though he never was until this year.
| refurb wrote:
| How do you know he was counted as retired? BLS shares
| their survey and how they determine if someone is
| unemployed - they basically ask if they are available to
| work and actively seeking work. I didn't see any cutoff
| for age.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#unemployed
| pwinnski wrote:
| I could definitely be wrong, but my understanding is that
| when unemployment benefits run out, so does one's status
| as unemployed, since they've lost the point of contact
| that enables them to ask those questions.
|
| At least twice in the last decade, he's been unemployed
| so long his benefits ran out. Perhaps the label in that
| case isn't "retired," but he wasn't counted as
| unemployed, either.
| rayiner wrote:
| U-3 does not exclude those whose benefits have run out
| but are still actively looking for work. It relies on
| social insurance claims in part, but also uses surveys to
| estimate how many folks are looking for work that aren't
| receiving unemployment.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Number of unemployment insurance claims is sometimes
| cited as an economic indicator, but it's definitely not
| the main measure of unemployment.
|
| The BLS tracks six measures of unemployment rate via
| survey called U1-U6. U3 is the official unemployment
| rate, but they report the others as well[1].
|
| For U3, you are considered unemployed if you do not have
| a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4
| weeks, and are currently available for work. U4 is that
| plus anyone who wants a job, but gave up looking because
| they don't think they will find one. U6 adds in people
| who only have part-time work but want full-time work.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment#United_Sta
| tes_Bur...
|
| [2] https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#unemployed
| lostlogin wrote:
| Off topic: I wish people would correct errors in my views
| and my understanding using a style like yours.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Yeah, but that information is captured under an different
| measure.
|
| The reported U-3 unemployment rate is measuring the rate
| of full-time job loss in the economy. That makes a good
| barometer of the economy as it can describe if job losses
| are accelerating or not.
|
| You can pick any of the alternate measures and they all
| say pretty much the same thing. But by overlooking those
| who have dropped out of the labor market, the U-3 focuses
| more on what is happening with the labor market _now_ not
| several years ago.
|
| You can try this for yourself by plotting the U-1 through
| U-6 rates on the same graph and picking the one you think
| is most useful as a snapshot of the labor force. You'll
| probably land on the U-3 as the U-1 doesn't show upticks
| in unemployment very well and the U-6 muddies the
| severity of upticks in unemployment. The broad strokes
| will be the same, but the nuance is missing.
| nickff wrote:
| >"The reported U-3 unemployment rate is measuring the
| rate of full-time job loss in the economy. That makes a
| good barometer of the economy as it can describe if job
| losses are accelerating or not."
|
| I think this is a perceptive statement; U-3 is most like
| the derivative of unemployment, so it's sensitive to
| changes, but not to steady-state issues.
|
| We should probably look at U-6 to help understand where
| we stand long-term, and U-3 to get a glimpse of whether
| things are getting better or worse. Unfortunately, I
| don't think many people want to think about these issues
| separately, so they'll only want one number.
| acruns wrote:
| Wouldn't it be great if HBO provided us a link to their
| "important new data" but since they don't we can't look at
| it for ourselves.
| [deleted]
| dalbasal wrote:
| >> Why should any of these people be considered
| "unemployed"?
|
| There is no abstract reason, unless we're just talking
| about what the word unemployed "really" means. Pointless
| semantics.
|
| The reason they should be considered unemployed is
| contextual. "Unemployment" is _the_ measure used by
| journalists & politicians to gauge the labour market. In
| _that_ context, it is very important to consider these
| people who have stopped expecting to work unemployed. They
| are part of the "slack." Their experience experience of
| the labour market is "i can't get a job."
|
| If unemployment is lower than it was in year X because
| people stop applying or qualifying for some unemployment
| benefit... that doesn't mean the labour market is better.
|
| Everything is contextual. People arguing for alternative
| unemployment measures aren't (generally) arguing semantics.
| Their arguing that the metric is misleading us.
| [deleted]
| goldenManatee wrote:
| The "true" is a little sensationalist though I doubt they
| were expecting anyone to care about their investigations.
| They were still going for "a _more_ true". They're not
| accounting for retired 65+ year olds. That's a little
| suggestive of just wanting to quickly look away.
|
| They looked at people that are structurally unemployed or
| stopped looking because they were disillusioned after some
| time; they also tried averaging a national rent gauge (yeah,
| regional would've been better - so that means approving them
| grant funding) to better understand the cost of living and
| who can afford to survive off their wage/salary. So they drew
| a line across the chart saying people below $X can't even
| afford surviving in America right now. There's some PBS
| specials on rural American single moms unable to feed their
| kids mid COVID - enter school lunch funding issues - and
| Twitter also has its share of people posting their anecdotes
| of plight.
| rubyfan wrote:
| The statistic they are describing as the "True Rate of
| Unemployment" isn't that. It's the rate of which society is
| earning a poverty level wage or less. It's a useful statistic
| and one that deserves discussion but it's not the "True Rate
| of Unemployment". They are just different.
| didibus wrote:
| Article does start with:
|
| > A person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a
| living wage -- but who can't find one -- is unemployed. If you
| accept that definition, the true unemployment rate in the U.S.
| is a stunning 26.1%
|
| I admit the word "true" in the title is kind of misleading, but
| the article itself isn't.
| smsm42 wrote:
| > A person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a
| living wage -- but who can't find one -- is unemployed
|
| "living wage" here adds a layer of confusion. Some argue
| "living wage" is at least $15 an hour, some argue even more.
| Certainly living in San Francisco on $15 an hour wage, even
| working fulltime, would be a challenge. However, this has
| nothing to do with "unemployment" as it is commonly
| understood. This is just confusing separate economic and
| societal problems to arrive at flashy number that actually
| doesn't mean much, as it is a result of different people
| having different economic and personal challenges.
| klyrs wrote:
| It's not that deep, or confusing. If you look at the
| unemployment chart, it has a caption.
| Data: Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity;
| Chart: Axios Visuals
|
| The source for that data is a hyperlink to [1], which
| defines the living wage at $20,000 per year before taxes.
|
| > What is the "True Rate of Unemployment"? The True Rate of
| Unemployment, as defined by the Ludwig Institute for Shared
| Economic Prosperity (LISEP), measures the percentage of the
| U.S. labor force that is functionally unemployed.
|
| > Using data compiled by the federal government's Bureau of
| Labor Statistics, the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the
| percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a
| full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job,
| or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at
| $20,000 annually before taxes.
|
| > Just as an accurate census is a prerequisite to funding
| American communities equitably, policymakers depend on
| economic indicators to shape economic policy. LISEP
| developed the True Rate of Unemployment to provide analysts
| and decision-makers with a more accurate measure of
| Americans' financial well-being.
|
| > For a more in-depth explanation of the True Rate of
| Unemployment, please reference this white paper[2].
|
| [1] https://www.lisep.org/
|
| [2] https://assets.website-
| files.com/5f67c16a6ca3251ecc11eca7/5f...
| smsm42 wrote:
| > which defines the living wage at $20,000 per year
| before taxes.
|
| But why? Just an arbitrary number? What that number
| means? Defining "functionally unemployed" as "earning
| less than an arbitrary number we pulled out of our noses"
| is hugely misleading. Maybe that person can't earn more
| because they don't have skills, or have personal issues
| that prevent them from being more productive, or maybe
| earning high wage is not their priority right now (e.g.
| internship or apprenticeship). Unemployment has specific
| meaning - e.g. that by creating more employment
| opportunities you could fix it. Stuffing anybody that is
| not earning over $20K, for any reason whatsoever, under
| the term, just confuses the matters.
|
| I get that it looks flashy - "the government is lying to
| you, the Real Truth is only available from us!" - but
| it's not useful to just change definitions of established
| terms because it sounds good in a soundbite. There are
| many other terms - like "labor participation",
| "underemployment", "economical hardship", "working poor",
| etc. - one could coin many more. Redefining existing one
| while slapping the misleading label "true" to it is not
| helping.
| klyrs wrote:
| Did you read the second link I posted? Because that's
| spelled out on page 2 in the Methodology section. More
| generally, are you here for curious conversation? Because
| your comment is full of generalizations and cynicism
| rather and does not address anything I, or the linked
| study, said.
| charwalker wrote:
| Different Unemployment Rates are defined and calculated
| differently because they are different. Simply listing a number
| called the unemployment rate is in itself disingenuous as the
| context of what type of rate is important. But it's easy for an
| article to list a number that fits their narrative and not
| explain what the number means. The context matters, per usual.
| tjr225 wrote:
| > $2000/month is enough to live comfortably with a personal car
| in low cost of living regions.
|
| I really doubt this to be true. You would almost have to choose
| to live in a place with no opportunity to advance upward for
| this to be the case .
| blix wrote:
| I live in a major US city for $2k/mo. It's not that hard. And
| if I lived in a cheaper area or city I could be much more
| comfortable.
|
| I think living on about this income is common for grad
| students, who mostly live in areas with "opportunity to
| advance upward".
| hanniabu wrote:
| What city could that possibly be? You must be living in a
| paid off house and act like everyone has that luxury.
| blix wrote:
| I pay rent. Finding a place to live for under $1k/mo is
| really only hard in a few cities. In many places you can
| do better if you can buy.
| antidaily wrote:
| $2000k = $2,000,000. And sorry, even that isn't enough to
| live comfortably in SF.
| blix wrote:
| Oops. That's what I get for staying up too late.
|
| I wouldn't wish living in SF on my worst enemy.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I think most of my worst enemies already live there
| voluntarily.
| wsinks wrote:
| Right - the second that they included 16-17 year olds in this,
| I started to pay less attention. I do want to go back to this
| and look further to see if I can glean out that demographic as
| well.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I thought the title was okay--I got exactly what I expected.
|
| "True Unemployment Rate" implies "I don't think our standard
| measure of employment accurately captures the state of the
| economy" which then implies "I'm going to provide my own
| metric, and explain why it's different and why I think it's
| better."
| anthony_romeo wrote:
| I completely agree, and reports on unemployment rates are one
| of my biggest Internet peeves:
|
| "The official unemployment rate is artificially depressed by
| excluding people who might be earning only a few dollars a
| week."
|
| This reads like paranoia. Regardless of how U-3 originated, U-3
| reflects an international standard of defining "unemployment".
| If different countries use different definitions of
| unemployment in their studies, then meaningfully comparing
| unemployment statistics among countries is futile (or just
| really really difficult).
|
| I guess one could argue that, say, U-6 should be the
| international standard. But whatever definition one uses
| doesn't actually _change_ anything in the real world. The
| different measures are trying to _describe_ reality, not
| _define_ the magical all-true unemployment rate. The point is
| to look at many different definitions to identify trends.
| Attempts to blindly point at U-6 and say that this is more
| "real" than U-3 is just as deceptive as claiming success over
| lowering the U-3 rate (even if it's because people are leaving
| the labor force).
|
| It should be up to outlets like Axios to explain these nuances
| rather than argue that one measure is more "true" than another.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| this is the first time I've seen U3 and U6. I didn't realize
| BLS had different stats. For those interested, here is their
| definitions.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm
| [deleted]
| snarf21 wrote:
| I agree this is a weird way to measure it but I think we don't
| measure it correctly. We don't measure _underemployment_ ,
| meaning people who used to work full time but have stopped even
| looking for work (*and are not retired). I'd like to see
| unemployment measured more like total population minus those
| employed.
| Izkata wrote:
| (I've scrolled 1/3rd down the page and am picking you at
| semi-random for this comment, so this isn't just a criticism
| of your framing, but of plenty I've seen so far)
|
| A lot of comments here are heavily biased towards accurately
| accounting for the retirement end of life, without
| considering the other end - people who are intentionally not
| working or are under-employed for some other reason. The one
| I had mainly in mind was highschool and college-aged students
| who are working part-time: they'd get included in under-
| employment, but aren't necessarily looking for a living wage
| yet because they have other priorities, so they don't get
| included in unemployment counts.
|
| Also,
|
| > I'd like to see unemployment measured more like total
| population minus those employed.
|
| This measure would include children who can't even work part-
| time.
| learc83 wrote:
| The BLS reports 6 different unemployment metrics.
| https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
|
| Several of them do measure underemployment.
| alistairSH wrote:
| This is the key.
|
| The government and media largely rely on U-3 (IIRC) when
| reporting unemployment. The upside is consistency - they
| all use the same number. The downside is this figure may
| not be fully representative of the economy.
|
| I would argue that U-5 or U-6 better represent the state of
| the economy (as it relates to employment), as both included
| some set of under-employed and recently-given-up would-be
| workers.
|
| But, we'd have to make a concerted effort to cut over to
| those numbers to avoid confusion.
| hatch_q wrote:
| In that sense you'll get people such as Bill Gates as
| unemployed as they are not on the payroll.
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| So? He's not statistically significant.
| ovi256 wrote:
| That's captured in the workforce participation rate, which is
| indeed at a 20 year low:
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
| jfengel wrote:
| They do have a measure that also reflects underemployment.
| The broadest measure is called U-6, "Total unemployed, plus
| all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus
| total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent
| of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally
| attached to the labor force." That also include the U-5,
| "discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached,
| have given a job-market related reason for not currently
| looking for work."
|
| The measures are available, and they're usually in the
| vicinity of twice the regularly-reported (U-3) rate.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
| dalbasal wrote:
| Am measure measures what is measures. Generally, measures like
| unemployment are useful in determining trends. Note how most of
| the unemployment measures are correlated.
|
| OTOH, it may be wrong (eg) over very long periods. If underlying
| behavioural changes happen (eg employment seeking behaviour,
| drifting of underemployment/unemployment ratios) it may miss long
| term trends.
|
| The problems start (almost immediately) when when the measure
| becomes the definition. Measures are tightly defined, objective
| and legible. That's attractive. So, we start to define (eg)
| unemployment as "that which IQ tests measure." This is totally
| off track, if the measures weaknesses are (they usually are)
| justified by arguing the measure is just for trend detection.
| Definition and trend detection are different purposes.
|
| In any case, the only way to get a less superficial understanding
| to define the measure in terms of what it actually measures, not
| what it's trying to measure. "people trying to find work" is an
| actually useful thing to pay attention to. It just isn't
| "unemployment" in the widest sense of the term.
|
| Personally, I hate the "index/metric" solution. This is chasing
| the rabbit down a hole. We can't have a measure that perfectly
| maps to unemployment (or financial wellbeing, or whatever).
| Efforts to do so end up measuring something even more abstract
| and difficult to understand.
|
| The alternative is to just use these measures as incomplete. We
| can look at "job seeker" rates, nonemployment rates, etc. No
| measure will tell us what's really happening. That's up to us
| human intellect to determine.
| speeder wrote:
| My country uses a similar definition.
|
| I graduated right in middle of 2008 crisis and for various
| reasons never found a full time job (all my work was owning my
| own contracting companies or startups) so for example my
| government (Brazil) doesn't count me as unemployed and doesn't
| let me have some benefits. But many employers instead see my
| empty employment registry (in Brazil theoretically everyone has
| one) to interpret I never worked so they refuse to hire me in
| first place because I might lack experience.
|
| Interviews don't go much better, for example Amazon interview all
| of the interviewers asked questions about conflict resolution in
| large teams I worked with in the past. I suspect the reason I was
| not hired was this question, since was the only one I couldn't
| answer at all.
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