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Even more interesting is the long-term trend of long-term discouraged workers. This doesn't seem to be recovering anytime soon, if you believe SGS - http://www.

Even more interesting is the long-term trend of long-term discouraged workers. This doesn't seem to be recovering anytime soon, if you believe SGS - http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chart...

grandmczeb 8y ago
The shadowstats metric is an estimate based on "proprietary modeling". In other words, it's made up with no real methodological backing. The people running shadowstats are pushing a political agenda, not doing real economics.
- mifreewil 8y ago
  > The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers. You can argue the accuracy of the numbers or estimates, but my understanding it is just supposed to take into account long-term discouraged workers, which you can decide whether they matter or not, which are not reflected in official numbers since 1994 according to SGS.
  - grandmczeb 8y ago
    > You can argue the accuracy of the numbers or estimates, but my understanding it is just supposed to take into account long-term discouraged workers Sure, and my estimate (based on very sophisticated modeling I won't give you any details about) is that the number of long-term discouraged workers is exactly 42. Here's the entirety of SGS's stated methodology for their estimate by the way: > The ShadowStats number—a broad unemployment measure more in line with common experience—is my estimate. The approximation of the ShadowStats “long-term discouraged worker” category—those otherwise largely defined out of statistical existence in 1994—reflects proprietary modeling based on a variety of private and public surveying over the last two-plus decades. SGS's estimates don't even pass basic plausibility tests either. For example, in May 2015 the SGS metric was 23%. Using the published U6 for the same month, we can solve for SGS's estimate for the number of long term discouraged workers: 26,114,100. That's 4x the BLS's estimate of people who wanted a job but did not not have one (6,536,000) and 7x the number who wanted a job and had not looked at least once in the last year (3,712,000) for the same time period. What's their model? What "public and private" surveys are they taking into account? What makes up the discrepancy between their estimates and the BLS's numbers? We don't know because SGS doesn't tell us, but I think we can both make an educated guess; their numbers are pulled out of their underwear.
dalbasal 8y ago
True. In the long term, these alternate definitions don't correlate. Long term "discouragement" is one that comes up relatively often because it can relate to political hot topics. Even more interesting (to me) are some long term trends that are outside of most unemployment debates. Eg (1) The long term implications are more about demography than economics, societal age structures and such. (2)The biggest mover of the last couple of generations has been women's employment. The employee pool basically skyrocketed. Employment/unemployment rates have not been overly impacted by this rapid increase in labour supply. This is still happening. The pool of experienced, female 58 year old lawyers is impacted by the norms/trends if the 80s. I think this shows how much flexibility the employment system has. Aggregating encourages us to think of demand for labour in macro (kind of Keynesian) terms. I think the truth is that demand for marginal labour (the difference between 4% and 8% in traditional/official unemployment measures) is different to the general demand. In other words, some portion of the population (different individuals at different times) is harder to employ. That doesn't mean it will look struggle to employ a different pool. If we had another gender to liberate, I think the market could probably absorb it regardless of without impacting unemployment rates very much.

grandmczeb 8y ago

The shadowstats metric is an estimate based on "proprietary modeling". In other words, it's made up with no real methodological backing. The people running shadowstats are pushing a political agenda, not doing real economics.

mifreewil 8y ago
> The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers. You can argue the accuracy of the numbers or estimates, but my understanding it is just supposed to take into account long-term discouraged workers, which you can decide whether they matter or not, which are not reflected in official numbers since 1994 according to SGS.
- grandmczeb 8y ago
  > You can argue the accuracy of the numbers or estimates, but my understanding it is just supposed to take into account long-term discouraged workers Sure, and my estimate (based on very sophisticated modeling I won't give you any details about) is that the number of long-term discouraged workers is exactly 42. Here's the entirety of SGS's stated methodology for their estimate by the way: > The ShadowStats number—a broad unemployment measure more in line with common experience—is my estimate. The approximation of the ShadowStats “long-term discouraged worker” category—those otherwise largely defined out of statistical existence in 1994—reflects proprietary modeling based on a variety of private and public surveying over the last two-plus decades. SGS's estimates don't even pass basic plausibility tests either. For example, in May 2015 the SGS metric was 23%. Using the published U6 for the same month, we can solve for SGS's estimate for the number of long term discouraged workers: 26,114,100. That's 4x the BLS's estimate of people who wanted a job but did not not have one (6,536,000) and 7x the number who wanted a job and had not looked at least once in the last year (3,712,000) for the same time period. What's their model? What "public and private" surveys are they taking into account? What makes up the discrepancy between their estimates and the BLS's numbers? We don't know because SGS doesn't tell us, but I think we can both make an educated guess; their numbers are pulled out of their underwear.

dalbasal 8y ago

True. In the long term, these alternate definitions don't correlate. Long term "discouragement" is one that comes up relatively often because it can relate to political hot topics. Even more interesting (to me) are some long term trends that are outside of most unemployment debates. Eg (1) The long term implications are more about demography than economics, societal age structures and such. (2)The biggest mover of the last couple of generations has been women's employment. The employee pool basically skyrocketed. Employment/unemployment rates have not been overly impacted by this rapid increase in labour supply. This is still happening. The pool of experienced, female 58 year old lawyers is impacted by the norms/trends if the 80s. I think this shows how much flexibility the employment system has. Aggregating encourages us to think of demand for labour in macro (kind of Keynesian) terms. I think the truth is that demand for marginal labour (the difference between 4% and 8% in traditional/official unemployment measures) is different to the general demand. In other words, some portion of the population (different individuals at different times) is harder to employ. That doesn't mean it will look struggle to employ a different pool. If we had another gender to liberate, I think the market could probably absorb it regardless of without impacting unemployment rates very much.