10 ms·

We’re Getting Close to Full Employment

• lukasb 9y ago
  Apparently if you break things down by gender the story is not as positive: 'But purportedly “near full employment” conditions notwithstanding, the work rate for the twenty-plus male was more than a fifth lower in 2015 than in 1948.' http://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/men-without-work http://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/men-withou...
  • ceejayoz 9y ago
    I'd be interested in how many stay-at-home dads are in that drop.
    • theparanoid 9y ago
      Approximately 0%. Outside the upper-middle class people don't have the luxury of not working. Real income has stagnated for middle and lower income people.
      • linkregister 9y ago
        How do you know that? From people you know or is there a resource for that information?
      • brewdad 9y ago
        As child care costs have risen, at least some families in the middle have concluded that it makes little sense for the parent with worse career prospects to work solely for the purposes of paying day care costs. When stagnated incomes can no longer pay for the expenses required to work, working makes less sense financially.
  • adventured 9y ago
    Using 1948 or the early 1950s without adjustment doesn't make sense. The US male labor pool was absorbed due to WW2 / the still vast expansion of the US military (and soon to be even more absorbed due to Korea). We had 550k men just in the US army at the start of 1948, with a US population base 1/2 what it is today. By comparison, in 1939, between the army + navy + marines, we had just 334,000 total military personnel. By 1954 we had something like 3.3 million active military personnel. That takes up a huge amount of labor slack.
  • geofft 9y ago
    Interesting. It seems there are two results here, probably independent. Note that the article talks both about "men" in the context of employment and "middle-aged white men without college degrees" in the context of mortality: it sounds like the explanations for these two statistics are quite different (and in particular, the first result about "men" is primarily influenced by non-white men). The book it's reviewing concludes that the work rate for men in the US is falling because of mass incarceration primarily being targeted at African-American men, and because of laws that make it anywhere from hard to impossible for convicted felons to re-enter the workforce upon serving their sentence. The author of that post has bolded this passage in quoting from the book: > As we shall see, a single variable – having a criminal record – is a key missing piece in explaining why work rates and [labor force participation rates] have collapsed much more dramatically in America than other affluent Western societies over the past two generations. This single variable also helps explain why the collapse has been so much greater for American men than women and why it has been so much more dramatic for African American men and men with low educational attainment than for other prime-age men in the United States. Other sources (e.g., The New Jim Crow) argue that mass incarceration is an intentional policy aimed at keeping black people out of public life as the Jim Crow laws did in the past, which explains this claim from the top of the blog post: "... the great majority of them have not only dropped out of the workforce, they have also dropped out from any commitments or responsibilities to society." (I am partway through reading The New Jim Crow, and it does also mention that economic / technological changes have resulted in a much poorer job market for urban workers over the last half-century or so.) So, if the joblessness rates are including men who can't work because they're literally in jail, and men who can't find a job because of their criminal record, it seems like there's an obvious explanation here - the number of men in those categories has gone up sharply since 1948. However, the blog post makes another claim sourced from The Economist that for people aged 45-54, white men in the US without a college degree, in particular, have had their mortality rates rise when the mortality rates of all 45-54-year-olds in several other rich countries have fallen. (I think. It's not very clear what groups are being compared.) This is very interesting and seems like a serious problem, but it seems likely to be entirely unrelated to the previous, given the conclusions, and I'd also like to see this un-broken by race/education/age/gender in the US, and broken by those factors in other countries. I don't have a good idea what would explain this, but it does occur to me that at the time that the people in this graph were considering getting a college degree, college was shifting towards being expected of all Americans who could attend it. (See, e.g., the uptick in the first chart in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_... ). So if this is just a proxy for "family wealth," I am relatively unsurprised to hear that mortality at age 50ish is correlated with how rich a family you were born into.
• revmoo 9y ago
  Great. Now lets bring rates back up so we don't get skullfucked in the next recession.
• seoguru 9y ago
  The official unemployment rate (U3 numbers) should be ignored. This number serves little purpose other than being a political tool today. https://www.facebook.com/ellis.winningham/posts/1422093837849460 https://www.facebook.com/ellis.winningham/posts/142209383784...
  • virmundi 9y ago
    To further this, U6 is around 8.6% - 1. 1 - http://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate http://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate
    • deleted 9y ago
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    • ganfortran 9y ago
      U-6 is close to prior Great Recession too, according to the chart.
      • HarryHirsch 9y ago
        Once salaries start rising I'll believe you.
        • ganfortran 9y ago
          U don't have to believe anyone. But if u believe in math, then even with this U-6 metric, it is back to 2007 level. Meaning this U-6 metric is not really an indicator diverging from the official claim either.
          • virmundi 9y ago
            It's positive in that it's tracking with U3. My point is that it unemployment on a daily basis, what mainstream America feels, is still twice as high as the "Full Employment" target set by the Feds. As to purchasing power, I'm not able to readily find numbers not that. Last I heard, people are working longer hours for the same pay they received in 2007/8. If that's true, they are functionally making less money. I've seen it first hand. People working 45-50 hours to make up for short staffing. However, I only have a few localized, anecdotal data.
• rayiner 9y ago
  I wonder if the author has ever taken a stroll around downtown Baltimore on a weekday afternoon and seen all the people milling about who are "fully employed." You need to carry that "employment to population ratio" graph out earlier than 1998: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300001 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300001. The employment ratio for men is down from 80%+ in the 1950s to ~65% today. Many of those men are of course in school, etc., but that merely reflects the weakness of the economy. You wouldn't expect a larger fraction of people to voluntarily go to school than in 1950 unless economic pressures compelled them to. Indeed, given that school is far more expensive today, you'd expect exactly the opposite.
  • dllthomas 9y ago
    > You wouldn't expect a larger fraction of people to voluntarily go to school than in 1950 unless economic pressures compelled them to. I would if a larger fraction than usual is of the ages at which schooling is most common. I have no idea whether that's the case or not (or the opposite, entirely).
  • JBReefer 9y ago
    ? Downtown Baltimore is stuffed with people who are busy working, and it's gotten pretty expensive. Most of the urban core of Baltimore is nice, it's the areas outside of the "white cross" that are structurally fucked.
    • existencebox 9y ago
      Er... while for definitions of "downtown" and "stuffed" and "most of" I could agree with you, I don't think I agree with the thrust of your argument as opposed to rayiner. Spent... 7? 8? years in baltimore, reading the police twitter and betting on how many triple homicides would occur today became a rather morbid drinking game. Certain areas, some even 2-3 blocks off Charles st are such that many of my friends didn't want to walk back to their houses alone, at least one was mugged off his bike on Charles itself, another had his house broken into, another peer was the "samurai sword" kid, if you remember that story. Even my breakdancing crew would joke about risks of going to certain venues on north ave, and we had a bunch of people who grew up in the center city there. In short, I'd assert that "the areas out of the white cross" make up _much_ of Baltimore, even if it's not the much most tourists visit (e.g. anything outside inner harbor) and EVEN within the "white cross" we were VERY aware of the city we were in.
• deleted 9y ago
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• elvirs 9y ago
  man I know people working as bank tellers, who rent just a room and still cant make ends meet. I dont think the 'employment' is good enough anymore. The tech who services my car at the premium car dealership said he has another job in addition to this full time job and still cant afford stake at home. I think in last 10 years a lot of new living expenses have been added to our daily life. cellphone bill, internet bill, all kind of bullshit mandatory donations to kids school, new 100 dollars per year for each point above 3 points on driver license, school books cost like 10 times more than they used to, have to have alarm system costing 30 dollars per month to get a property insurance discount, all that shit. wages did not keep up with raising costs. i see too many employed hard working honest people whose average checking account balance is usually a 2-3 digit number
  • mathperson 9y ago
    Steak at home?
    • elvirs 9y ago
      I meant steak, sorry for typo.
      • deleted 9y ago
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      • soperj 9y ago
        I still don't understand that phrase. Help?
        • elvirs 9y ago
          the guy said he would like to be able to afford steak to take home more often, and I quote 'but nope, I guess its beans again this week too" sorry I wrote 'stake' twice. it may be keyboard on my phone messing with me
          • 9y ago
• highd 9y ago
  Report: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf My comment was going to be about how unemployment doesn't count multiple very large and important groups, including those looking for work for 12 months or more. But actually it looks like those numbers have pretty much all improved as well, and some even more significantly than the base unemployment rate. Discouraged workers dropped by about ~20% from last year, marginally attached workers dropped by about ~10%. Long-term unemployed dropped by ~20% from last year. At first glance that seems pretty crazy. I'd love to see some analysis on this.
• kqr2 9y ago
  Also should consider the number of people who are going on permanent disability: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/03/22/175076784/episode-446-the-invisible-14-million http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/03/22/175076784/episo... The number of Americans receiving federal disability payments has nearly doubled over the last 15 years. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/trends-with-benefits https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/...
  • 1024core 9y ago
    This is the hidden secret of "unemployment". A lot of people have just given up looking for employment, and are on SSDI or some other such program. The number of Americans on SSDI went from about 4M to 9M between 1998 and 2014: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/dibGraphs.html#3 https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/dibGraphs.html#3
• deleted 9y ago
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• kbutler 9y ago
  The official unemployment rate includes only those who are "actively seeking" employment, by specific measures. It does not include those who have given up looking for work or don't consider the available work sufficiently rewarding. A sufficiently strong recovery brings more of those to find work. Labor force participation may be a better measure. https://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet https://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet
  • mrbabbage 9y ago
    Did you read the article? > Broader measures of unemployment tell the same story. The so-called U-6 rate, which captures people who are working part-time but want a full-time job, and those who would like a job but have given up looking out of frustration, is also back down to its level before the last recession. It fell to 8.6 percent in April from 8.9 percent, and the last time it was lower was November 2007.
    • notacoward 9y ago
      Yes, but does a U-6 level of 8.6% constitute "full employment"? According to the technical definition they're unrelated. Less formally, 8.6% unemployed, underemployed, or discouraged seems quite a bit short of full anything. Pointing out flaws in the original definition or terminology in no way implies that the GP hadn't read the article, and the suggestion to prefer labor force participation is a good one.
      • dragonwriter 9y ago
        "Full employment" is a technical term that means no cyclical unemployment; it can involve arbitrarily large quantities of non-cyclical, e.g., frictional and, more to the point, structural (mismatch between skills and demand) unemployment. It seems intuitively likely to me that structural unemployment is becoming a bigger problem (and that structural rather than cyclical factors are an increasing factor in discouraged workers.) "Full employment" doesn't mean no employment problems, it just means that the problems are non-cyclical.
  • 9y ago
• deft 9y ago
  What does being employeed matter? Having a liveable salary and average lifestyle for all is more important.
• deleted 9y ago
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• muninn_ 9y ago
  So if we are saying this isn't that great of news, what should I make of some European countries?
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• virmundi 9y ago
  I had this conversion with a feminist. I claimed that a large reason for wage stagnation is that women hit the workforce en masse in the 1970s. That's when the stagnate wages started. I made no judgement on women working. I just tried to explain why everyone's wages have barely moved: more labor supply. Compounding this is global labor. Sadly, the individual became quiet combative about these two facts.
  • pmyteh 9y ago
    She probably became combative because you were deploying the lump of labour fallacy and in doing so either explicitly or implicitly blaming women working for the failures of economic policy since the 70s. Although this would at least make a refreshing change from the usual gambit of blaming immigrants, unfortunately you seem to have managed to do that as well. Your 'just tried to explain' (wrongly) is a classic example of why the expression 'mansplaining' is a thing. Please stop.
    • rhapsodic 9y ago
      >She probably became combative because you were deploying the lump of labour fallacy and in doing so either explicitly or implicitly blaming women working for the failures of economic policy since the 70s. That's not a valid reason to become combative. If she felt the GP was wrong, she could have simply, with facts and logic, explained why she felt that way. In my observation, when people respond to an argument with combativeness, it usually means they realize they cannot refute the argument with facts and logic. So they get all nasty and start name-calling (e.g. "you're a racist!") or they deploy some childish, imbecilic bromide like accusing the other person of "mansplaining".
      • pmyteh 9y ago
        Sure. And people also beecome combative when the person arguing with them is being a dick. Case in point: my previous post has attracted a rapid slew of (not exactly undeserved) down votes, and precisely one person (you) even attempting facts and logic. And even yours pitches 'childish, imbecilic', which isn't uncombative itself, in context.
• chrismealy 9y ago
  I'll worry about too much employment when labor's share of national income returns recovers.
• yourthrowaway2 9y ago
  I'm just going to leave this here: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chart... But I fully expect to be down-voted out of reality
  • 1024core 9y ago
    > But I fully expect to be down-voted out of reality And I obliged. Next time, leave the meta-comments out.
    • yourthrowaway2 9y ago
      meta-meta-meta
  • geofft 9y ago
    I am guessing your claim is something like "If you count long-term discouraged workers, and U-6 only counts short-term discouraged workers, it has not actually recovered"? (Note that it's fairly common to downvote people on HN who aren't clear what they mean, whether or not what they mean would be acceptable to the hivemind.) If so, I'm curious what this website's methodology for calculating long-term discouraged workers is - and in particular whether that includes people who have been "discouraged" by being in jail, or people who have trouble finding a job because of a previous criminal conviction. (I'm also curious whether this includes people who have retired young, are on trust funds and never really wanted a job in the first place, etc.) 'lukasb linked a very interesting blog post, reviewing a book that claims that a huge explanatory factor for unemployment is mass incarceration. So any useful analysis of the causes of non-receding unemployment needs to take this potential factor into account; it may well be the case that ending mass incarceration and creating a federal fair-chance law will cause the "ShadowStats" number to rapidly drop back to matching U-6. I don't see any mention of this factor on that website.
  • MaysonL 9y ago
    Shadowstats is pretty much bullshit. See: http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2015/03/31/deconstructing-shadowstats-why-is-it-so-loved-by-its-followers-but-scorned-by-economists/ http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2015/03/31/deconstruct... http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2015/06/15/deconstructing-shadowstats-part-2-in-search-of-an-alternative-measure-of-unemployment/ http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2015/06/15/deconstruct... I upvoted you because I want my reply to get visibility.
• notacoward 9y ago
  You know how else you get to "full employment"? By eating all the unemployed. It's scarcely less ethical than what the government and NYT are doing here. (1) Define "full employment" as 95.3% of the "workforce". (2) Define "workforce" to exclude arbitrarily many groups. (3) Ignore all the people who've been forced into one of the excluded groups. This is not full employment in any reasonable sense of the word. Not unless "full health care coverage" is 95.3% of people who are above the poverty line and have no preexisting conditions.
  • tunap 9y ago
    A modest proposal, indeed. Let's not leave out the underemployed, degree holding burger flippers and Wally World clerks. The Circle K by my house had an architectural engineer for awhile, but he got away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal