9 ms·

Millions of educated, experienced workers are tossed aside by a strong economy

89 points by notlob 8y ago

mnm1 8y ago
That's because it's not a strong economy. Millions have stopped looking for work and never started after the recession. Wages have stagnated even for white collar jobs. Employers are unwilling to pay competitively. Millions like the ones in the article are underemployed and underutilized. How the fuck is that a strong economy?
- slededit 8y ago
  You would expect that as the largest cohort in modern history retires en mass that the ratio of people in the work force to those outside would start to shift. I think its valid to say that a lot of baby boomers were discouraged post-2008 and perhaps would have worked an extra decade had things been better. But at this point we're well into their retirement years.
  - notadoc 8y ago
    Except that, statistically, most baby boomers in the USA have zero to little saved for retirement, and can't afford to retire, and so they keep working.
    - slededit 8y ago
      They have not saved nearly enough but it hasn't stopped them from retiring. The number to watch is the "old-age dependency ratio" which has risen to 25/200 from 21 per 100 in 2010. The trend is for this number to increase as more boomers surpass 65. As people age their skills and acuity decrease, so while some may want to continue working its not at all a sure thing they'd be able to even if 2008 hadn't happened. I can't think of a good statistic to capture this and we're both looking at second derivative statistics. https://www.wsj.com/articles/retiring-baby-boomers-leave-the-u-s-with-fewer-workers-to-support-the-elderly-1529553660 https://www.wsj.com/articles/retiring-baby-boomers-leave-the...
    - ourmandave 8y ago
      I know a few people who would have retired except they need the health insurance.
      - slededit 8y ago
        Isn't medicare better than most private insurance plans?
        francisofascii 8y ago
        Medicare doesn't start until 65. So they probably mean would have retired early.
        slededit 8y ago
        Close to half the baby boomer cohort is 65 or older now. We're not talking about early retirement.
        notadoc 8y ago
        Maybe a long time ago. Politics have dramatically since changed Medicare, which is why nearly all seniors buy supplement plans today.
- sillyquiet 8y ago
  You know, I keep hearing the 'many stopped working during the recession' thing bandied about like received wisdom, and have not seen any statistics to back that up. Note: I am not saying it's not true, just that I personally haven't seen any studies or reports to back up that fact. Have you a link? All the U6 (real) unemployment rate numbers I've seen indicate 'real' unemployment is back to pre-recession numbers
  - Kalium 8y ago
    https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 There's this. This doesn't exactly back up the claim - there are a lot of reasons people might not be participating.
    - HarryHirsch 8y ago
      Especially this: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU01300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU01300060 25-54 year Labor Paticipation Rate is those that you'd expect to be working but aren't.
      - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        The difference between the 25-54 and civilian participation rates are largely attributable to retiring boomers. Participation rates depend heavily on demographics. They matter for things like dependency ratios. But quoting them without the context of a large generation retiring and increasing time spent getting educated hides the full picture. That said, the 3 percentage point drop in 25-54 participation is largely attributable to the opioid crisis—that’s a disturbing start to a trend.
  - mnm1 8y ago
    How do you propose such statistics be collected if these people have given up and are no longer looking for a job and are no longer receiving unemployment benefits? I assume this is why the unemployment rate doesn't include these people and therefore doesn't ever reflect reality.
bambataa 8y ago
The waste of human potential is staggering. The purpose of the economy should be to enable making full use of it. Instead we focus on profit.
- jblow 8y ago
  You have to work out a system, then, to figure out who pays to employ the people doing unprofitable work. Not as easy as it sounds.
  - adamsea 8y ago
    Yes but also the entire definition of "profitable" vs "unprofitable" work is messed up. Simple example: The real, measurable costs of pollution - illness, polluted drinking water, etc - are externalized and so companies doing said polluting are "profitable." Would they still be profitable if those costs were not externalized? I suspect not. Similarly I suspect there are externalities not being accounted for, for self-interested reasons on the parts of those collecting the profit, when assessing which types of work are profitable or not.
    - pixl97 8y ago
      Hmm, in your incentive system, human exterminator might be the most profitable job title.
  - nradov 8y ago
    The government should become a temporary employer of last resort for workers who have exhausted their unemployment benefits. They could clean up parks, tutor children, paint over graffiti, update public records, provide child care for other workers, etc. Stuff that would be of value to society but which we often can't afford to pay regular government workers to do. This would help to keep unemployed people in the workforce and doing something productive while they retrain for jobs in higher demand. And we should subsidize vocational training to a greater extent so that students aren't forced to take on financially crippling loans.
adpirz 8y ago
Why the U3 statistic for unemployment is far from telling the whole story: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+adult+population,+us+labor+force+participation http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+adult+population,+us...
notadoc 8y ago
From an employer standpoint, educated and experienced = expensive
- Brockenstein 8y ago
  And everyone is looking for a deal. And sometimes people have to be burned by going cheap. Although sometimes they do get lucky and get someone decent for a pittance.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  and maybe too opinionated ?
- pastor_elm 8y ago
  An ideal employee (in maybe 75% of the positions out there) should only know enough to get his or her job done.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  Long term unemployed people are cheap to hire no matter what their experience or education.
hypertexthero 8y ago
It is time for Universal Basic Income. https://www.yang2020.com/ https://www.yang2020.com/
- mrlatinos 8y ago
  That's always the easy answer, isn't it?
  - hypertexthero 8y ago
    It is not easy, but it is something I believe we need to try as part of the solution to the problems facing our species on this planet. http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    Until you have to find enough money to pay for it.
    - timbit42 8y ago
      There is a lot of savings in its low administration costs. Since it would replace a number of social programs that have high administration costs, a UBI actually saves money. There can be additional cost savings in UBI (and even in existing social programs) if it is structured to incentivise people to work. Many existing social programs actually disincentivise people from working because they lose the income from the social program if they work (too much) and it results in a net loss for them, so they don't bother working. If a social program is structured so that people don't lose all of their social program income when they work, then they realize a net gain in their income and they continue working. The longer they continue working, the more likely it is that they will gain experience allowing them to make more income on their own, resulting in a further reduction of their social program income. A very simplistic example would be to remove 50 cents for every dollar they make at their job. If they received $500/month when not working, by the time they're making $1000/month at their job, they're receiving no social program income anymore.
fierarul 8y ago
I find it amazing how much US cares about employment rate. Then people start talking about U3 vs U*. I know they mean something... they always come up. What I'm curious about these statistics is: how do the statistics track the self-employed? Seems to me the gig-economy is not about part-time jobs but about part-time self-employment. So, if you are self-employed and you pay your taxes, from the government's point of view you are OK. But that doesn't mean you are profitable or making a living wage. In IT, if you are 'benched' the employer pays you regardless. But a 'benched' self-employed person is basically an unemployed that is burning through cash paying taxes, health insurance, etc.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > that doesn't mean you are profitable or making a living wage These statistics are tracked to a pedantic level of detail by the BLS. You can get numbers of people by industry and zip code and earnings bucket and quarter for most categories of self employment going back to the early 1980s. Moreover, unemployment isn’t mean to measure if people are getting a liveable wage. It measure if they’re getting any wage. The problem you cite is an issue, but it would quickly resolve itself into unemployment as the cash stores ran out.
  - fierarul 8y ago
    I wasn't thinking only about the self-employed (as in S-corp) but also LLC owners that are employees at their own company and smaller ventures/startups(?). Indeed, at some point the money runs out and that will become actual unemployment, but it will show up in statistics with a rather long delay or not at all. In the mean time, you have people doing literally nothing while on paper the economy is overheating. Of course, I'm sure it's a small percentage of the population... so probably not very relevant.
    - VLM 8y ago
      "For consistencies sake" (or more likely, to make the numbers look better) the stats have been compiled the same way for a century or more with criteria relevant to an economy mostly employing unskilled manual laborers for factory work and ag work. Because unskilled laborers can find a job if they want in less than a year, they drop off the unemployement rolls after a year. Of course its trivial if you have an esoteric degree and decades of experience to end up in a situation where there are no skilled jobs in your field... at all... regardless how "hot" the economy might be for other people with other skills, and in a year it won't matter anyway as you drop off the list of unemployed and onto NEET or similar status. That is the situation with almost every person in the linked article, they have 2020 skills and experience, no jobs exist for those skills, and they'll will only appear for a short time in unemployment stats designed to track unskilled manual laborers working at a Ford plant a century ago.
Karishma1234 8y ago
I am having hard time understanding the problem articulated in this article. Can someone with English as first language summarise the actual technical arguments ? For example I see that there is one graph with part-time, full-time graph. The full time employment has increased rapidly while the part-time graph remains the same. How is that possible ? Also, sharing economy is a new thing where a lot of people who would be "unemployed" in past are now doing part time work. A lot of work can be done online today staying at home and hence more people might have taken up part time work. Another graph shows how part time and full time wages have grown and it claims part-time wages have been stagnant. The graph does not show that. -- “I’m overqualified for these jobs, but they don’t think that I would be happy to do them,” Corcoran said. “I’m not finding any interest in a 60-year-old guy with gray hair and, honestly, kind of a limited shelf life.” -- Aren't these people actually the perfect candidates for part time experimental work positions where you could fire them easily ? (In almost all countries old people have hard time finding new employment)
golergka 8y ago
> And once we knew where to look, we found their stories hiding in plain sight, in the Labor Department’s data. In other words, you began your research with conclusion already in mind, and then looked for a way to present this data to show this conclusion. Excellent statistical work. That's exactly how such research should be done.
bargl 8y ago
The economy and the education system are out of sync. We are turning out a TON of degrees for a few jobs and expecting people to be able to just succeed based on a 4 year degree program. All the while the economy does expect a 4 year degree for some jobs that really shouldn't. So you're expected to waste money on a degree you don't need to work a job that won't help you pay back your degree because they aren't paying you what you need to pay off that debt. I don't have a solution. I just see that I know plenty of people who have GREAT degrees, are very intelligent and are working in a field where their success is more defined by who they are then how they were educated. I think whatever solution we do have, needs to take a look at both the economy as well as the education system and how we prepare our young for a life in the workforce. Because at the end of the day that's what we're doing, we're educating our young to be able to step into our economy and profit. Again, I don't know the solution. Regulate the number of graduates within a certain degree field? Regulate jobs so that we force jobs to accomodate the degrees? Unionize alternate jobs so working at walmart / factories becomes profitable again? I don't know I just worry about what my children will do when they enter the economy and how will they stay in the middle class.
- Endama 8y ago
  Teacher friends of mine talk to me about how their job is next to impossible. The curriculum in the schools is basically perpetually 12 years behind, students today are just now being taught stuff that the market is now responding to but the fundamentals that are needed for those skills should have been introduced years prior. Educators are effectively trying to project 12 years out and try and guess what the market will demand so that they can provide the minimum skills necessary to provide a modicum of middle-class life.
  - pishpash 8y ago
    This sounds like a gross exaggeration. Twelve years out? Are first-graders being taught the latest framework or something? Except that maybe it shouldn't stretch out for twelve years, pre-college education is learning the fundamentals that do not depend on the job market. The fundamentals haven't changed in hundreds of years.
pastor_elm 8y ago
>"She once had her own office, secretaries and assistants, along with titles like “director” that spoke to her decades of experience. Now, she’s a temp — one of many. >Levi was laid off from her job at a law office during a merger in early 2015, and has struggled to find long-term work. In late 2016, she filed for bankruptcy." How do you go from director at 59 to filing bankruptcy in fewer than two year after losing your job? Fiscal irresponsibility
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  I think about this a lot. I've always been a bit concerned with pricing myself out of the market. I've never really fought particularly hard for pay raises, but I have kept up my education and experience and my pay has risen pretty consistently, putting me in a very comfortable salary range. But I still consider the possibility that the bottom could drop out completely and every employer in the US could collectively decide that programmers aren't worth what they're paying us and find myself settling for a lot less than I've been used to. Before I got married and had kids, I organized my life around that possibility - I never put myself into a position where I _needed_ the paycheck I was getting. Since getting married and having two kids, though? My wife and I both make high salaries and we're still barely breaking even every month. It's all disposable stuff - lots of vacations, eating out several times a week, a handful of extracurricular activities for the kids; all stuff we could cut out in a heartbeat... _if_ she was willing to. Honestly, I'm not as worried about potentially losing earning potential as I am about convincing my wife that we have to make some cuts if we ever find ourselves in that position.
  - germinalphrase 8y ago
    I am in no position to judge one way or another - but it seems like you already know what you want to do.
  - citizenkeen 8y ago
    My wife and I read the Two Income Trap early in our relationship. Then I went to grad school. Then she went to grad school. Then I went to grad school again. After seven years, we had never really had two incomes, only one. So when we had a kid, all of our expectations were built on one income. We maintained those - my wife has been a SAHM now for almost three years. She's going to go back when he starts pre-school one or two days a week, but she'll be choosing satisfaction over money, and only to keep skills relevant (she still gets job offers). If I ever lose my job, she can make a call, get a job (she's privileged in her field), and pick up 80% of my slack. We did this so that we never have to be too worried about my team scaling down. It helps me sleep at night.
fullshark 8y ago
The recession was a market correction not just for housing prices but also for labor prices, and a lot of educated/experienced workers have learned that the market doesn't value their skills like they thought they did.
prolikewh0a 8y ago
I keep hearing that we're in a strong economy, but the reality is that we aren't. It's a strong economy for the rich and powerful, but not really anyone else. Most American's can't afford a $1000 emergency [1]. Wages actually went down last month [2] 78% of Americans are living Paycheck to Paycheck. [3] Nearly half of all Americans are low-income or in poverty. [4] 1/5 of children in USA are living in poverty [5] I want someone to explain to me how this is a "good economy". I keep hearing it. It's total nonsense. I'm glad WaPo is bringing up that workers are still struggling despite these claims of a "strong economy". [1] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/most-americans-cant-afford-to-pay-for-even-a-minor-emergency_us_5a68e67ae4b0022830090e5b https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/most-americans-cant-aff... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/15/for-the-biggest-group-of-american-workers-wages-arent-just-flat-theyre-falling/?utm_term=.0afbedc4d098 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/15/for-t... [3] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck-to-paycheck.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck... [4] https://kairoscenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Poverty-Fact-sheet-Jan-2017.pdf https://kairoscenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Poverty-... [5] http://www.nccp.org/topics/childpoverty.html http://www.nccp.org/topics/childpoverty.html
- gaius 8y ago
  Plot the chart of GDP vs GDP/capita. In the UK that tells you everything you need to know about the true state of the economy.
- wufufufu 8y ago
  4 out of 5 of your examples are about income inequality, which isn't the same as how strong the economy is IMO. Everyone could be living in a shack and the poverty line = no shack and by your definition the economy would be strong if everyone could afford a new shack if their current one collapsed.
  - wiz21c 8y ago
    if you separate income inequality and economy, then you basically say that economy's goal is not to improve everybody's life. Benefits of successful economy should be shared by everyone.
makecheck 8y ago
Many “jobs” today won’t even cover cost of living in their areas, making UNDER-employment a valid issue that is too easily ignored in statistics that show lots of people “employed”. Also, being forced to take on a massive amount of debt just to have a chance to get a certain job makes that job less valuable overall. A company can still boot you out in less time than it takes to pay off debts so you’re really trying to find continued employment to justify an investment such as having to move or obtaining a degree. And of course you might acquire new debts while paying off the older ones. These situations tie the hands of so many, and that’s not a “strong” economy. If there’s no truly disposable income, you’re essentially expecting people to set aside their basic needs to raise your stock price.
NTDF9 8y ago
What is paradoxical is that American voters keep voting to reduce taxes for the rich, who don't do anything with that saved money to increase businesses. Taxes should be lower for the poor who would thus spend more and keep the economic engine running and create jobs. Taxes should be much higher for the rich so that that money is used by Govt to do infrastructure work (create jobs) or pay down debt (and thus provide services and create jobs). Lowering taxes for the rich just allows the rich to seek investments that will increase their own wealth, not necessary creating jobs (Some VCs are an abberation to this).
- nitwit005 8y ago
  They keep electing people who reduce taxes for the rich. If it was up for a direct vote, I doubt most of these tax bills would pass. The last one was deeply unpopular with the public. Some of it's just failings of a two party system. You vote for the one you like better, but given a binary choice it's a fairly non-specific vote.
  - NTDF9 8y ago
    I think this a great opportunity for someone to make a real time "consequences" website. Whatever the candidate says, fact check it and display a few important impacts to people directly. Economic is the easiest. Another good one is jobs, taxes, quality of life, debt, inequality.
lkrubner 8y ago
This sums up in a nutshell the 40 year slide in Mens wages: “When he first started working iron, Hartnett was making about $43.90 in today’s dollars. On his last project, he made $16.93.”
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

89 points by notlob 8y ago

mnm1 8y ago

That's because it's not a strong economy. Millions have stopped looking for work and never started after the recession. Wages have stagnated even for white collar jobs. Employers are unwilling to pay competitively. Millions like the ones in the article are underemployed and underutilized. How the fuck is that a strong economy?

slededit 8y ago
You would expect that as the largest cohort in modern history retires en mass that the ratio of people in the work force to those outside would start to shift. I think its valid to say that a lot of baby boomers were discouraged post-2008 and perhaps would have worked an extra decade had things been better. But at this point we're well into their retirement years.
- notadoc 8y ago
  Except that, statistically, most baby boomers in the USA have zero to little saved for retirement, and can't afford to retire, and so they keep working.
  - slededit 8y ago
    They have not saved nearly enough but it hasn't stopped them from retiring. The number to watch is the "old-age dependency ratio" which has risen to 25/200 from 21 per 100 in 2010. The trend is for this number to increase as more boomers surpass 65. As people age their skills and acuity decrease, so while some may want to continue working its not at all a sure thing they'd be able to even if 2008 hadn't happened. I can't think of a good statistic to capture this and we're both looking at second derivative statistics. https://www.wsj.com/articles/retiring-baby-boomers-leave-the-u-s-with-fewer-workers-to-support-the-elderly-1529553660 https://www.wsj.com/articles/retiring-baby-boomers-leave-the...
  - ourmandave 8y ago
    I know a few people who would have retired except they need the health insurance.
    - slededit 8y ago
      Isn't medicare better than most private insurance plans?
      - francisofascii 8y ago
        Medicare doesn't start until 65. So they probably mean would have retired early.
        slededit 8y ago
        Close to half the baby boomer cohort is 65 or older now. We're not talking about early retirement.
      - notadoc 8y ago
        Maybe a long time ago. Politics have dramatically since changed Medicare, which is why nearly all seniors buy supplement plans today.
sillyquiet 8y ago
You know, I keep hearing the 'many stopped working during the recession' thing bandied about like received wisdom, and have not seen any statistics to back that up. Note: I am not saying it's not true, just that I personally haven't seen any studies or reports to back up that fact. Have you a link? All the U6 (real) unemployment rate numbers I've seen indicate 'real' unemployment is back to pre-recession numbers
- Kalium 8y ago
  https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 There's this. This doesn't exactly back up the claim - there are a lot of reasons people might not be participating.
  - HarryHirsch 8y ago
    Especially this: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU01300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU01300060 25-54 year Labor Paticipation Rate is those that you'd expect to be working but aren't.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      The difference between the 25-54 and civilian participation rates are largely attributable to retiring boomers. Participation rates depend heavily on demographics. They matter for things like dependency ratios. But quoting them without the context of a large generation retiring and increasing time spent getting educated hides the full picture. That said, the 3 percentage point drop in 25-54 participation is largely attributable to the opioid crisis—that’s a disturbing start to a trend.
- mnm1 8y ago
  How do you propose such statistics be collected if these people have given up and are no longer looking for a job and are no longer receiving unemployment benefits? I assume this is why the unemployment rate doesn't include these people and therefore doesn't ever reflect reality.

bambataa 8y ago

The waste of human potential is staggering. The purpose of the economy should be to enable making full use of it. Instead we focus on profit.

jblow 8y ago
You have to work out a system, then, to figure out who pays to employ the people doing unprofitable work. Not as easy as it sounds.
- adamsea 8y ago
  Yes but also the entire definition of "profitable" vs "unprofitable" work is messed up. Simple example: The real, measurable costs of pollution - illness, polluted drinking water, etc - are externalized and so companies doing said polluting are "profitable." Would they still be profitable if those costs were not externalized? I suspect not. Similarly I suspect there are externalities not being accounted for, for self-interested reasons on the parts of those collecting the profit, when assessing which types of work are profitable or not.
  - pixl97 8y ago
    Hmm, in your incentive system, human exterminator might be the most profitable job title.
- nradov 8y ago
  The government should become a temporary employer of last resort for workers who have exhausted their unemployment benefits. They could clean up parks, tutor children, paint over graffiti, update public records, provide child care for other workers, etc. Stuff that would be of value to society but which we often can't afford to pay regular government workers to do. This would help to keep unemployed people in the workforce and doing something productive while they retrain for jobs in higher demand. And we should subsidize vocational training to a greater extent so that students aren't forced to take on financially crippling loans.

adpirz 8y ago

Why the U3 statistic for unemployment is far from telling the whole story: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+adult+population,+us+labor+force+participation http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+adult+population,+us...

notadoc 8y ago

From an employer standpoint, educated and experienced = expensive

Brockenstein 8y ago
And everyone is looking for a deal. And sometimes people have to be burned by going cheap. Although sometimes they do get lucky and get someone decent for a pittance.
agumonkey 8y ago
and maybe too opinionated ?
pastor_elm 8y ago
An ideal employee (in maybe 75% of the positions out there) should only know enough to get his or her job done.
tonyedgecombe 8y ago
Long term unemployed people are cheap to hire no matter what their experience or education.

hypertexthero 8y ago

It is time for Universal Basic Income. https://www.yang2020.com/ https://www.yang2020.com/

mrlatinos 8y ago
That's always the easy answer, isn't it?
- hypertexthero 8y ago
  It is not easy, but it is something I believe we need to try as part of the solution to the problems facing our species on this planet. http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  Until you have to find enough money to pay for it.
  - timbit42 8y ago
    There is a lot of savings in its low administration costs. Since it would replace a number of social programs that have high administration costs, a UBI actually saves money. There can be additional cost savings in UBI (and even in existing social programs) if it is structured to incentivise people to work. Many existing social programs actually disincentivise people from working because they lose the income from the social program if they work (too much) and it results in a net loss for them, so they don't bother working. If a social program is structured so that people don't lose all of their social program income when they work, then they realize a net gain in their income and they continue working. The longer they continue working, the more likely it is that they will gain experience allowing them to make more income on their own, resulting in a further reduction of their social program income. A very simplistic example would be to remove 50 cents for every dollar they make at their job. If they received $500/month when not working, by the time they're making $1000/month at their job, they're receiving no social program income anymore.

fierarul 8y ago

I find it amazing how much US cares about employment rate. Then people start talking about U3 vs U*. I know they mean something... they always come up. What I'm curious about these statistics is: how do the statistics track the self-employed? Seems to me the gig-economy is not about part-time jobs but about part-time self-employment. So, if you are self-employed and you pay your taxes, from the government's point of view you are OK. But that doesn't mean you are profitable or making a living wage. In IT, if you are 'benched' the employer pays you regardless. But a 'benched' self-employed person is basically an unemployed that is burning through cash paying taxes, health insurance, etc.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> that doesn't mean you are profitable or making a living wage These statistics are tracked to a pedantic level of detail by the BLS. You can get numbers of people by industry and zip code and earnings bucket and quarter for most categories of self employment going back to the early 1980s. Moreover, unemployment isn’t mean to measure if people are getting a liveable wage. It measure if they’re getting any wage. The problem you cite is an issue, but it would quickly resolve itself into unemployment as the cash stores ran out.
- fierarul 8y ago
  I wasn't thinking only about the self-employed (as in S-corp) but also LLC owners that are employees at their own company and smaller ventures/startups(?). Indeed, at some point the money runs out and that will become actual unemployment, but it will show up in statistics with a rather long delay or not at all. In the mean time, you have people doing literally nothing while on paper the economy is overheating. Of course, I'm sure it's a small percentage of the population... so probably not very relevant.
  - VLM 8y ago
    "For consistencies sake" (or more likely, to make the numbers look better) the stats have been compiled the same way for a century or more with criteria relevant to an economy mostly employing unskilled manual laborers for factory work and ag work. Because unskilled laborers can find a job if they want in less than a year, they drop off the unemployement rolls after a year. Of course its trivial if you have an esoteric degree and decades of experience to end up in a situation where there are no skilled jobs in your field... at all... regardless how "hot" the economy might be for other people with other skills, and in a year it won't matter anyway as you drop off the list of unemployed and onto NEET or similar status. That is the situation with almost every person in the linked article, they have 2020 skills and experience, no jobs exist for those skills, and they'll will only appear for a short time in unemployment stats designed to track unskilled manual laborers working at a Ford plant a century ago.

Karishma1234 8y ago

I am having hard time understanding the problem articulated in this article. Can someone with English as first language summarise the actual technical arguments ? For example I see that there is one graph with part-time, full-time graph. The full time employment has increased rapidly while the part-time graph remains the same. How is that possible ? Also, sharing economy is a new thing where a lot of people who would be "unemployed" in past are now doing part time work. A lot of work can be done online today staying at home and hence more people might have taken up part time work. Another graph shows how part time and full time wages have grown and it claims part-time wages have been stagnant. The graph does not show that. -- “I’m overqualified for these jobs, but they don’t think that I would be happy to do them,” Corcoran said. “I’m not finding any interest in a 60-year-old guy with gray hair and, honestly, kind of a limited shelf life.” -- Aren't these people actually the perfect candidates for part time experimental work positions where you could fire them easily ? (In almost all countries old people have hard time finding new employment)

golergka 8y ago

> And once we knew where to look, we found their stories hiding in plain sight, in the Labor Department’s data. In other words, you began your research with conclusion already in mind, and then looked for a way to present this data to show this conclusion. Excellent statistical work. That's exactly how such research should be done.

bargl 8y ago

The economy and the education system are out of sync. We are turning out a TON of degrees for a few jobs and expecting people to be able to just succeed based on a 4 year degree program. All the while the economy does expect a 4 year degree for some jobs that really shouldn't. So you're expected to waste money on a degree you don't need to work a job that won't help you pay back your degree because they aren't paying you what you need to pay off that debt. I don't have a solution. I just see that I know plenty of people who have GREAT degrees, are very intelligent and are working in a field where their success is more defined by who they are then how they were educated. I think whatever solution we do have, needs to take a look at both the economy as well as the education system and how we prepare our young for a life in the workforce. Because at the end of the day that's what we're doing, we're educating our young to be able to step into our economy and profit. Again, I don't know the solution. Regulate the number of graduates within a certain degree field? Regulate jobs so that we force jobs to accomodate the degrees? Unionize alternate jobs so working at walmart / factories becomes profitable again? I don't know I just worry about what my children will do when they enter the economy and how will they stay in the middle class.

Endama 8y ago
Teacher friends of mine talk to me about how their job is next to impossible. The curriculum in the schools is basically perpetually 12 years behind, students today are just now being taught stuff that the market is now responding to but the fundamentals that are needed for those skills should have been introduced years prior. Educators are effectively trying to project 12 years out and try and guess what the market will demand so that they can provide the minimum skills necessary to provide a modicum of middle-class life.
- pishpash 8y ago
  This sounds like a gross exaggeration. Twelve years out? Are first-graders being taught the latest framework or something? Except that maybe it shouldn't stretch out for twelve years, pre-college education is learning the fundamentals that do not depend on the job market. The fundamentals haven't changed in hundreds of years.

pastor_elm 8y ago

>"She once had her own office, secretaries and assistants, along with titles like “director” that spoke to her decades of experience. Now, she’s a temp — one of many. >Levi was laid off from her job at a law office during a merger in early 2015, and has struggled to find long-term work. In late 2016, she filed for bankruptcy." How do you go from director at 59 to filing bankruptcy in fewer than two year after losing your job? Fiscal irresponsibility

commandlinefan 8y ago
I think about this a lot. I've always been a bit concerned with pricing myself out of the market. I've never really fought particularly hard for pay raises, but I have kept up my education and experience and my pay has risen pretty consistently, putting me in a very comfortable salary range. But I still consider the possibility that the bottom could drop out completely and every employer in the US could collectively decide that programmers aren't worth what they're paying us and find myself settling for a lot less than I've been used to. Before I got married and had kids, I organized my life around that possibility - I never put myself into a position where I _needed_ the paycheck I was getting. Since getting married and having two kids, though? My wife and I both make high salaries and we're still barely breaking even every month. It's all disposable stuff - lots of vacations, eating out several times a week, a handful of extracurricular activities for the kids; all stuff we could cut out in a heartbeat... _if_ she was willing to. Honestly, I'm not as worried about potentially losing earning potential as I am about convincing my wife that we have to make some cuts if we ever find ourselves in that position.
- germinalphrase 8y ago
  I am in no position to judge one way or another - but it seems like you already know what you want to do.
- citizenkeen 8y ago
  My wife and I read the Two Income Trap early in our relationship. Then I went to grad school. Then she went to grad school. Then I went to grad school again. After seven years, we had never really had two incomes, only one. So when we had a kid, all of our expectations were built on one income. We maintained those - my wife has been a SAHM now for almost three years. She's going to go back when he starts pre-school one or two days a week, but she'll be choosing satisfaction over money, and only to keep skills relevant (she still gets job offers). If I ever lose my job, she can make a call, get a job (she's privileged in her field), and pick up 80% of my slack. We did this so that we never have to be too worried about my team scaling down. It helps me sleep at night.

fullshark 8y ago

The recession was a market correction not just for housing prices but also for labor prices, and a lot of educated/experienced workers have learned that the market doesn't value their skills like they thought they did.

prolikewh0a 8y ago

I keep hearing that we're in a strong economy, but the reality is that we aren't. It's a strong economy for the rich and powerful, but not really anyone else. Most American's can't afford a $1000 emergency [1]. Wages actually went down last month [2] 78% of Americans are living Paycheck to Paycheck. [3] Nearly half of all Americans are low-income or in poverty. [4] 1/5 of children in USA are living in poverty [5] I want someone to explain to me how this is a "good economy". I keep hearing it. It's total nonsense. I'm glad WaPo is bringing up that workers are still struggling despite these claims of a "strong economy". [1] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/most-americans-cant-afford-to-pay-for-even-a-minor-emergency_us_5a68e67ae4b0022830090e5b https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/most-americans-cant-aff... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/15/for-the-biggest-group-of-american-workers-wages-arent-just-flat-theyre-falling/?utm_term=.0afbedc4d098 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/15/for-t... [3] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck-to-paycheck.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck... [4] https://kairoscenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Poverty-Fact-sheet-Jan-2017.pdf https://kairoscenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Poverty-... [5] http://www.nccp.org/topics/childpoverty.html http://www.nccp.org/topics/childpoverty.html

gaius 8y ago
Plot the chart of GDP vs GDP/capita. In the UK that tells you everything you need to know about the true state of the economy.
wufufufu 8y ago
4 out of 5 of your examples are about income inequality, which isn't the same as how strong the economy is IMO. Everyone could be living in a shack and the poverty line = no shack and by your definition the economy would be strong if everyone could afford a new shack if their current one collapsed.
- wiz21c 8y ago
  if you separate income inequality and economy, then you basically say that economy's goal is not to improve everybody's life. Benefits of successful economy should be shared by everyone.

makecheck 8y ago

Many “jobs” today won’t even cover cost of living in their areas, making UNDER-employment a valid issue that is too easily ignored in statistics that show lots of people “employed”. Also, being forced to take on a massive amount of debt just to have a chance to get a certain job makes that job less valuable overall. A company can still boot you out in less time than it takes to pay off debts so you’re really trying to find continued employment to justify an investment such as having to move or obtaining a degree. And of course you might acquire new debts while paying off the older ones. These situations tie the hands of so many, and that’s not a “strong” economy. If there’s no truly disposable income, you’re essentially expecting people to set aside their basic needs to raise your stock price.

NTDF9 8y ago

What is paradoxical is that American voters keep voting to reduce taxes for the rich, who don't do anything with that saved money to increase businesses. Taxes should be lower for the poor who would thus spend more and keep the economic engine running and create jobs. Taxes should be much higher for the rich so that that money is used by Govt to do infrastructure work (create jobs) or pay down debt (and thus provide services and create jobs). Lowering taxes for the rich just allows the rich to seek investments that will increase their own wealth, not necessary creating jobs (Some VCs are an abberation to this).

nitwit005 8y ago
They keep electing people who reduce taxes for the rich. If it was up for a direct vote, I doubt most of these tax bills would pass. The last one was deeply unpopular with the public. Some of it's just failings of a two party system. You vote for the one you like better, but given a binary choice it's a fairly non-specific vote.
- NTDF9 8y ago
  I think this a great opportunity for someone to make a real time "consequences" website. Whatever the candidate says, fact check it and display a few important impacts to people directly. Economic is the easiest. Another good one is jobs, taxes, quality of life, debt, inequality.

lkrubner 8y ago

This sums up in a nutshell the 40 year slide in Mens wages: “When he first started working iron, Hartnett was making about $43.90 in today’s dollars. On his last project, he made $16.93.”

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