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The official unemployment rate includes only those who are "actively seeking" employment, by specific measures. It does not include those who have given up loo

by kbutler 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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.
kevinnk 10y ago
Labor force participation doesn't take into account demographic changes so it's almost categorically worse than U3. Look at U6 for something that takes into account discouraged and part time workers.
nsgoetz 10y ago
Labor force participation has many other problems - retirees being a huge one. There are disputes on who to include as actively looking for work and how to measure the underemployment, but labor force participation is not the answer.
- x3n0ph3n3 10y ago
  Labor-force participation can be scoped to just prime-age workers (25-54): https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/the-missing-men/488858/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/the-mis...

by kbutler 10y ago

mrbabbage 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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.

kevinnk 10y ago

Labor force participation doesn't take into account demographic changes so it's almost categorically worse than U3. Look at U6 for something that takes into account discouraged and part time workers.

nsgoetz 10y ago

Labor force participation has many other problems - retirees being a huge one. There are disputes on who to include as actively looking for work and how to measure the underemployment, but labor force participation is not the answer.

x3n0ph3n3 10y ago
Labor-force participation can be scoped to just prime-age workers (25-54): https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/the-missing-men/488858/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/the-mis...