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It's really not that complicated. Wall Street doesn't (generally) own businesses on Main Street. Main Street is skewed towards locally owned boutiques, cafes,

by treis 6y ago

It's really not that complicated. Wall Street doesn't (generally) own businesses on Main Street. Main Street is skewed towards locally owned boutiques, cafes, shops, restaurants and so on. Those are getting killed but it doesn't matter to the S&P 500 because they're not listed there. To some extent it is good for the S&P 500 as the money shifts from those locally owned businesses to the mega corps in the S&P 500. We've gone from ~4% unemployment to 10-15%. Which sounds bad. But if you flip it around, we've gone from 96% employment to 85-90%. The vast majority of people are still employed and the economy is mostly still humming along.

big_youth 6y ago
>We've gone from ~4% unemployment to 10-15%. Which sounds bad. But if you flip it around, we've gone from 96% employment to 85-90%. The vast majority of people are still employed and the economy is mostly still humming along. This is not how it works. The US measures unemployment using levels, the 10-15% are U-3, which only counts people without jobs who are in the labor force. To remain in the labor force, they must have looked for a job in the last four weeks. The U-6, or real unemployment rate, includes the underemployed, the marginally attached, and discouraged workers and is at 25%. There are plenty of deeper explanations online but basically politicians love to talk about U-3 but the true unemployment is U-6.
- Miner49er 6y ago
  U-6 was 16.5% in July - it's improving. It was 6.8% pre-COVID, so it's not really any worse off then U-3. It's still about a 10% jump in both.
anemoiac 6y ago
"Employment" is actually below 62%, if we look at the percentage of the working age population that is employed. [1] 1. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...

by treis 6y ago

big_youth 6y ago

>We've gone from ~4% unemployment to 10-15%. Which sounds bad. But if you flip it around, we've gone from 96% employment to 85-90%. The vast majority of people are still employed and the economy is mostly still humming along. This is not how it works. The US measures unemployment using levels, the 10-15% are U-3, which only counts people without jobs who are in the labor force. To remain in the labor force, they must have looked for a job in the last four weeks. The U-6, or real unemployment rate, includes the underemployed, the marginally attached, and discouraged workers and is at 25%. There are plenty of deeper explanations online but basically politicians love to talk about U-3 but the true unemployment is U-6.

Miner49er 6y ago
U-6 was 16.5% in July - it's improving. It was 6.8% pre-COVID, so it's not really any worse off then U-3. It's still about a 10% jump in both.

anemoiac 6y ago

"Employment" is actually below 62%, if we look at the percentage of the working age population that is employed. [1] 1. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...