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Is it a good thing that a 60+ year old goes back to work at a low paying job because he/she can't pay the bills? A 60 year old who is voluntarily retired is no

Is it a good thing that a 60+ year old goes back to work at a low paying job because he/she can't pay the bills? A 60 year old who is voluntarily retired is not "unemployed". If they later end up taking a job due to financial hardship, that changes the unemployment rate very little; it just adds 1 to the denominator of people in the labor force.

maratd 7y ago
To add to this, only those who are actively seeking work and are not employed, are considered unemployed. A retired person (or a person who has given up looking for work) is not counted as unemployed, but will be counted once employed.
arcticbull 7y ago
I think they meant if lots of them were doing it, not just one, in which case the denominator would go up, well, a lot. I think this was also an example of a hypothesis: Why have people doing crap jobs that are better automated just because they can’t afford to live otherwise? The system is broken, in that we need to better support the folks on the fringes so we can just automate away a lot of mindless, repetitive boring work. The remaining jobs can pay well, and we can stop benchmarking the economy of how many people we put to work regardless of the meaningfulness of what they’re doing. Why waste a human life flipping burgers or banging away in the mines? Make robots do that, and let’s provide a solution to the displaced, like for instance basic income but totally open to alternatives.
- rayiner 7y ago
  > Why waste a human life flipping burgers or banging away in the mines? Make robots do that, and let’s provide a solution to the displaced, like for instance basic income but totally open to alternatives. Because we don’t have the technology to actually do that? We don’t even have the technology to replace the guy taking drive through orders. (“You want one Big Mech?”). This discussion is pointless and premature. There are enormous economic incentives to automate away every job that can be done efficiently though automation. It’s just that our technology is actually very primitive, and that shows when trying to apply it to replacing service workers.
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    We don’t even have the technology to replace the guy taking drive through orders Yeah we do, touchscreen menus (or ATM style pushbutton menus in places with bad weather). There are factories that assemble frozen mini burgers for supermarkets. There are pizza vending machines out there. So an entire fast food restaurant could be turned into a vending machine with current technology.
    - majos 7y ago
      If you think the technology is there, what explains its lack of adoption? I don’t think McDonalds et al. are in the business of leaving easy optimization on the table. (My own guess is that touch screens are still more expensive and buggy than humans, and machine-made food still trades off novelty to be profitable. But I don’t know.)
      - nitrogen 7y ago
        McDonald's already uses touchscreens in some locations. I'm guessing the rest comes down to tradition and the availability of cheap labor preventing the motivation to turn existing technology into a packaged franchise of automated restaurants.
      - rfmw19 7y ago
        McDonalds seems to be rolling them out slowly, but are actually cutting staff while simultaneously increasing their fleet of touchscreens. I see a lot more employees alternating between doing work in the kitchen vs. taking orders at the cashier. This is even during relatively high demand times with long customer wait lines. This is just an anecdote though, the data may disagree. I'd also be curious to see any user interface studies on these touchscreens. In my limited experiences, they are completely slow and thus an awful experience. They clearly are trying to sell more at every step instead of being useful and efficient for the end user.
      - kds3 7y ago
        In my city almost all of them were replaced by big self-service touchscreen displays with credit card reader attached. It's usually 4-6 machines and one assistant on call from kitchen area / takeout area when someone wants to pay with cash. They also help clients use touchscreen display to make orders when someone don't understand how to work with them. So my guess for lack of adoption can be explained by: - inertia and lack of incentives (who said recession?), - people with cash, - people who aren't good with technologies, - people who have no one to talk to (they don't know what they want to eat today and want your advice).
kaitai 7y ago
The point is there are a lot of people in this position. I personally know many people 65-75 working/trying to find work because of financial instability. Edited to add that there's a further problem: it's hard to find work when you're 70, and it's even harder to find 'knowledge work' for most 70-yr-olds. So the 70-yr-olds I know looking for work are working freelance or contingent sorts of things, or working retail/post office/food service -- and some of those jobs are physically difficult. One guy I know was doing a 6-week temporary USPS gig, working 4 am-noon shifts loading things from here to there. He mentioned he'd never been as sore in his life as he was the first few weeks. Many people would not be able to physically do this work at that age, frankly.
- orangecat 7y ago
  The point is there are a lot of people in this position. Even if there are, that's not going to lower the unemployment rate significantly; it's more likely to raise it. Say there are 100 million people in the labor force, of which 4 million don't have jobs. The unemployment rate is 4% (4/100). Now 10 million previously retired people suddenly realize that they need to go back to work, and they all get hired instantly. The unemployment rate falls to 4/110=3.6%, not a huge change. And in reality all of those people won't get jobs immediately, and while they're looking they're counted as unemployed. If 1 million out of the 10 million former retirees haven't found jobs yet, the unemployment rate rises to 5/110=4.5%.
  - baddox 7y ago
    What is the mechanism to identify and count people who were voluntarily retired but now wish they could find a job but can’t?
    - orangecat 7y ago
      If they're actively looking for work, then they're unemployed. If they're not looking for work because they assume there are no opportunities, they're "discouraged workers": https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/discouraged_worker.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/discouraged_worker.asp. Discouraged workers aren't counted in the primary unemployment rate, but are counted in U4 and U6, which are also historically low; see https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U4RATE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U4RATE and https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE.

maratd 7y ago

To add to this, only those who are actively seeking work and are not employed, are considered unemployed. A retired person (or a person who has given up looking for work) is not counted as unemployed, but will be counted once employed.

arcticbull 7y ago

I think they meant if lots of them were doing it, not just one, in which case the denominator would go up, well, a lot. I think this was also an example of a hypothesis: Why have people doing crap jobs that are better automated just because they can’t afford to live otherwise? The system is broken, in that we need to better support the folks on the fringes so we can just automate away a lot of mindless, repetitive boring work. The remaining jobs can pay well, and we can stop benchmarking the economy of how many people we put to work regardless of the meaningfulness of what they’re doing. Why waste a human life flipping burgers or banging away in the mines? Make robots do that, and let’s provide a solution to the displaced, like for instance basic income but totally open to alternatives.

rayiner 7y ago
> Why waste a human life flipping burgers or banging away in the mines? Make robots do that, and let’s provide a solution to the displaced, like for instance basic income but totally open to alternatives. Because we don’t have the technology to actually do that? We don’t even have the technology to replace the guy taking drive through orders. (“You want one Big Mech?”). This discussion is pointless and premature. There are enormous economic incentives to automate away every job that can be done efficiently though automation. It’s just that our technology is actually very primitive, and that shows when trying to apply it to replacing service workers.
- nitrogen 7y ago
  We don’t even have the technology to replace the guy taking drive through orders Yeah we do, touchscreen menus (or ATM style pushbutton menus in places with bad weather). There are factories that assemble frozen mini burgers for supermarkets. There are pizza vending machines out there. So an entire fast food restaurant could be turned into a vending machine with current technology.
  - majos 7y ago
    If you think the technology is there, what explains its lack of adoption? I don’t think McDonalds et al. are in the business of leaving easy optimization on the table. (My own guess is that touch screens are still more expensive and buggy than humans, and machine-made food still trades off novelty to be profitable. But I don’t know.)
    - nitrogen 7y ago
      McDonald's already uses touchscreens in some locations. I'm guessing the rest comes down to tradition and the availability of cheap labor preventing the motivation to turn existing technology into a packaged franchise of automated restaurants.
    - rfmw19 7y ago
      McDonalds seems to be rolling them out slowly, but are actually cutting staff while simultaneously increasing their fleet of touchscreens. I see a lot more employees alternating between doing work in the kitchen vs. taking orders at the cashier. This is even during relatively high demand times with long customer wait lines. This is just an anecdote though, the data may disagree. I'd also be curious to see any user interface studies on these touchscreens. In my limited experiences, they are completely slow and thus an awful experience. They clearly are trying to sell more at every step instead of being useful and efficient for the end user.
    - kds3 7y ago
      In my city almost all of them were replaced by big self-service touchscreen displays with credit card reader attached. It's usually 4-6 machines and one assistant on call from kitchen area / takeout area when someone wants to pay with cash. They also help clients use touchscreen display to make orders when someone don't understand how to work with them. So my guess for lack of adoption can be explained by: - inertia and lack of incentives (who said recession?), - people with cash, - people who aren't good with technologies, - people who have no one to talk to (they don't know what they want to eat today and want your advice).

kaitai 7y ago

The point is there are a lot of people in this position. I personally know many people 65-75 working/trying to find work because of financial instability. Edited to add that there's a further problem: it's hard to find work when you're 70, and it's even harder to find 'knowledge work' for most 70-yr-olds. So the 70-yr-olds I know looking for work are working freelance or contingent sorts of things, or working retail/post office/food service -- and some of those jobs are physically difficult. One guy I know was doing a 6-week temporary USPS gig, working 4 am-noon shifts loading things from here to there. He mentioned he'd never been as sore in his life as he was the first few weeks. Many people would not be able to physically do this work at that age, frankly.

orangecat 7y ago
The point is there are a lot of people in this position. Even if there are, that's not going to lower the unemployment rate significantly; it's more likely to raise it. Say there are 100 million people in the labor force, of which 4 million don't have jobs. The unemployment rate is 4% (4/100). Now 10 million previously retired people suddenly realize that they need to go back to work, and they all get hired instantly. The unemployment rate falls to 4/110=3.6%, not a huge change. And in reality all of those people won't get jobs immediately, and while they're looking they're counted as unemployed. If 1 million out of the 10 million former retirees haven't found jobs yet, the unemployment rate rises to 5/110=4.5%.
- baddox 7y ago
  What is the mechanism to identify and count people who were voluntarily retired but now wish they could find a job but can’t?
  - orangecat 7y ago
    If they're actively looking for work, then they're unemployed. If they're not looking for work because they assume there are no opportunities, they're "discouraged workers": https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/discouraged_worker.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/discouraged_worker.asp. Discouraged workers aren't counted in the primary unemployment rate, but are counted in U4 and U6, which are also historically low; see https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U4RATE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U4RATE and https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE.