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This is phrased in a very deceptive way. There are lots of issues with the 'Unemployment' metric. It is indeed a deceptive metric. However, it is deliberately m

This is phrased in a very deceptive way. There are lots of issues with the 'Unemployment' metric. It is indeed a deceptive metric. However, it is deliberately misleading to append 'True' to 'Unemployment Rate' with a custom definition intended to make an argument. You are stacking confusion on confusion instead of clarifying. If you want to create a different metric around a 'living wage,' then it should be defined in a way that makes that more clear. There are also serious regional differences in what such a wage might be. $2000/month is enough to live comfortably with a personal car in low cost of living regions. In NYC it means you are probably stacked into a decaying apartment with many other people with no car.

AQXt 6y ago
> $2000/month is enough to live comfortably with a personal car in low cost of living regions. In NYC it means you are probably stacked into a decaying apartment with many other people with no car. It's funny how many Americans conflate "living" with the possession of a car...
- sebmellen 6y ago
  In many regions of the US, it's a simple necessity to have a car, just as it might be in more rural parts of Europe. I know people who work as farmers in the north of the Netherlands, and a car is as essential a commodity for them as it might be for a rural Midwesterner.
  - dalbasal 6y ago
    "just as it might be in more rural parts of Europe." Even europeans often have this urban blindspot. In some places (eg netherlands), you may be able to live conveniently without a car. For a lot of places (eg >50% of ireland), not having a car is a major lifestyle inhibitor. Transport (or lack thereof) dictates a lot of your life... from work opportunities to whether or not you can access a supermarket.
    - bkor 6y ago
      > In some places (eg netherlands) That's because Netherlands changed the country to not rely on cars. It used to rely on cars, just like most countries. It's still far from perfect; there's still loads of places where there are not enough options. Car-only places is considered restrictive. Similarly, kids should be able to do things on their own. Seems nowadays kids rely on their parents to move them around. That's pretty crazy IMO. Any other country could do the same. Also people in Netherlands complained that "government is going after cars", etc.
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        The population density in the Netherlands is one of the highest in the world, higher than any American state and 14 times higher than the US as a whole. So public transportation infrastructure that makes sense in the Netherlands isn't necessarily going to be practical elsewhere.
        apexalpha 6y ago
        While you are correct the Netherlands has a higher pop density it really doesn't matter, for a country as a whole. See, Russia has a population density of 8.4/km2 (vs 33km2 in US). But that doesn't stop Russian cities from building public transport. Just like how empty acreage and dessert wouldn't stop US cities from building decent public transport. What matters is not the average density of the country, but the layouts of the cities. A good example is NYC. According to your statement it shouldn't have public transport because the average of the country is too sparsely populated, but that doesn't really matter. Just like how the empty tundra in Russia doesn't prevent Moscow or St Peterburg from building public transport.
        Mvandenbergh 6y ago
        Indeed. You really have to look at settlement patterns and not just a single scalar density. What makes public transport difficult in the US is that suburbs are dense enough that a lot of people live there but not dense enough to put in efficient public transport. If you drew a histogram of the Russian population sorted by density, you would find that a very large % of the population lived in dense local areas and a relatively small population is spread over the vast rural parts of the country. Not even just tundra, even Russia West of the Urals is very sparsely populated for the most part.
  - gambiting 6y ago
    Exactly - in Poland there are some regions which are very poor by any definition, and yet every home will have 2-3 cars simply because it's impossible to get anywhere without one. Yeah there is some public transport, but it's often very infrequent or not going where people need to be.
  - enragedcacti 6y ago
    I think it is important to note that this isn't just a problem related geography or sprawl. I live in Fairfax County just outside of DC. It's pretty populous (1.15 million) but getting anywhere is still a challenge if you don't live within walking distance of an Orange Line metro stop. This assumes that the metro hasn't caught on fire recently or that the line hasn't been shut down for multiple months for repairs. Bus timetables are so spread out that a 20 minute drive is a 2-3 hour bus ride in a lot of cases. Sprawl certainly plays a part but lack of investment in public transport is big reason why cars are so essential.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    It's certainly not a necessity in NYC though, which was the example given. In most big cities in the US you're better off not having a car if you're poor, since cars are a big ongoing expense. Hell, I'm very far from poor and I'm best off not having a car in NYC.
    - Grazester 6y ago
      I think not having a car in NYC is more of a convenience issue than a cost issue(due to parking etc) to a larger degree. The assumption here is that you are not just barely getting by.
      - CydeWeys 6y ago
        It's both. Insurance and parking are very expensive. If you don't want to pay for parking then you need to budget several hours of your time each week just moving your car around to different parking spots.
        Grazester 6y ago
        ..and thank you for reminding me I have to move my car this evening! Insurance is costly compared to other states. I pay about $1200/year for full everything though(windshield damaged and highway touring). A friend of mine was just quoted $3000/year for insurance on an Audi. For that I would ride a bicycle everywhere.
- deleted 6y ago
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- culopatin 6y ago
  I think it’s because of the way the country was built. Getting from A to B without a car is drastically worse, and it adds up to a proportionally bad quality of living unless you happen to live in a walkable older city (NYC, Boston for example). In some places like Florida your nearest store could be 4 miles away. The bus here is so underutilized and so inconvenient that I don’t think I’ve ever considered. A 30m drive is a 2h bus ride.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- selykg 6y ago
  In a lot of rural areas, like where I am, there is no such thing as public transportation. If you don't have a car you can maybe make due during the spring and fall months where the temperatures are reasonable. But it's going to be hell during winter (gets cold enough and there's enough snow a bike won't work for you) and during summer it gets too hot. I'm a 5 minute drive to the nearest grocery store. For a walk, that's about 3-ish miles. On a bike, not so bad, but also keep in mind there's no bike lane or anything so you're sharing the road with cars. There's some added risk to that. A car isn't a requirement, but it makes a massive difference in your ability to live.
- bboylen 6y ago
  In many areas of the country it is very, very challenging to get anywhere without one. I don't think access to grocery store / work is necessarily trivial to life.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  a personal car is a big expense. If you can live comfortably in a region with a personal car then it is a significantly different metric than you can live comfortably without a personal car. Also the way the U.S is structured living comfortably without a personal car means you must be living somewhere where you can work without that personal car, which is a rare job to have, meaning that you can be locked into your employer. Or is that the funny part you're referring to? on edit: I see lots of people made my second point as well.
- cpursley 6y ago
  Well, in most places in the US you literally can't go without a vehicle if you want employment and food. Even if you're physically proximate to food and other activities of daily living, there are often no sidewalks or paths to safely walk or bike there. There's also a social stigma of walking (the person must be poor or lost their license for drunk driving).
  - bkor 6y ago
    > Well, in most places in the US you literally can't go without a vehicle if you want employment and food. That's due to zoning laws being the way that they are. If you'd change the way you'd build up and zone things it would be possible. The YouTube channel "Not Just Bikes" goes into this in various videos. I couldn't find the exact video that explained the zoning laws, did find another: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul_xzyCDT98 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul_xzyCDT98 (kids in Netherlands go to school on their own). Despite Netherlands being considered great for cyclists there's loads to improve. The channel goes into that detail as well, e.g. that major roads are being closed. See e.g. this video of a big road being closed in Utrecht: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fePpwYCs_JM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fePpwYCs_JM (different channel)
- horsawlarway 6y ago
  What's your point? Outside of a very small number of major metro areas, cities in America are not livable without a car. And I say that as someone who really, really despises how required car ownership is, and who has spent a lot of time trying to find alternatives. Even in reasonably large metro areas where there is a decent bus system, and a passable metro (Atlanta, in this case) a nice E-bike is still nowhere near enough to replace my car. I've managed to replace the car for my daily commute with a ~40 minute Marta ride, and an additional 20 minutes on the bike (Would be an additional 40+ if I used the buses), but the metro doesn't come within 20 miles of either of my parents houses, nor does it get me to my brother who lives in Athens, GA. Nor does it get me anywhere close to my grandparents. I wouldn't have been able to visit my now wife while dating without a car. I'm assuming you're not American, but if you haven't visited for a while, I suspect you're just wrong about any sense of scale you might have. Atlanta alone has a metro area of 8400 square miles. Houston is 10,000 square miles. My wife's family has this problem. They're from Taiwan. When I first visited they warned me about a long car ride to see some family in the country. Long meant 40 minutes. 40 minutes barely gets you across Atlanta. 2 hours gets you to Athens if traffic is decent. 2 hours 30 minutes the a different direction will get you to my family in north GA (and Atlanta is already well in the north half of GA). I can drive south at 80 mph for 4 freaking hours and still be in GA.
  - spdionis 6y ago
    You have to realize, using miles to convey the "sense of scale" to non-Americans is ironic because... we can't be bothered to understand how much 10000 square "miles" actually is.
    - ovi256 6y ago
      For those with high school math ability, it's doable to notice that 10000 sqm is the area of a square with side 100 m, so about a patch of 160 km by 160 km.
    - treeman79 6y ago
      Swap miles for km. It’s about the same for arbitrary vastness. Well under an order of magnitude off.
- thegginthesky 6y ago
  I can't assume where you are from but, as a non-American who lived in distinct parts of the US, I can tell you a bit about why a car is essential for living to many Americans. Firstly, the US is different from many parts of the world. Not only it's massive, but swaths of American urbanization are shaped around cars as a basic necessity, especially with the adoption of suburbs. Most of the US outside of big cities are car-first towns both in infrastructure, planning, and services. In turn, having a car for many Americans is more than an efficient way to get around, it is the only way to move safely and reliably. Many parts of the US have no public transportation, no reliable ride-sharing, no safe way to bike (both the roads and the culture are hostile towards cyclists). For more information, I'd suggest reading on the phenomena called "Automotive city" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_city
  - bsanr2 6y ago
    It should be noted that this was not an accident, but the result of a concerted effort by corporate interests with major influence in state and federal gov't via professional connections and their control of the labor market. This not only involved the dismantling of existing, car-agnostic infrastructure - clearly, as most major American cities existed and were designed to provide for the needs of its residents before the existence of the automobile - but also represented yet another chapter in the history of collusion between private and gov't entities in the interest of maintaining America's toxic race and class order.
    - bottled_poe 6y ago
      I would be interested in reading more about this topic if you have any recommended references?
      - nullstyle 6y ago
        I'm not the GP, but I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_Am... might be a good fit if you're interested in this arena.
- Frost1x 6y ago
  It's an absolute necessity, it's not a luxury contrary to the way it may be painted or viewed externally. Unless you want to diverge from efficiency expectations in modern society needed to work a job and instead move out to an Amish farm of sorts, you're going to need a car. I'd love to have a viable efficient public transit system, infrastructure, or culture built around it but it simply doesn't exist for well over the vast majority of Americans. All other transit options simply aren't viable alternatives.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >It's funny how many Americans conflate "living" with the possession of a car... It's funny how out of touch many non-Americans (and to a greater than one would think extent, upper middle class Americans who live in a few select cities) are with the realities of day to day life in most of the US. Except in a few select areas where transit is very good and the cost of owning a car is very high owning your own personal means of transportation goes hand in hand with a major quality of life improvement and it compounds your relative earning potential (by giving you more flexibility to work more lucrative jobs or reduce cost of living). There's a reason it comes third after shelter and employment in the list of things you get as soon as you're out of jail (or a coma).
- confidantlake 6y ago
  I am an American that does not own a car since I live in a city and can live without one. However, for the vast majority of Americans a car is a necessity. There are places with no public transportation and no sidewalks. The only way to get around is to drive.
- jjk166 6y ago
  You can get a low end new car with a payment of only around $200/mo and buying used is significantly cheaper still. You don't necessarily need to possess a car, but if you don't have the financial means to possess a car then you really can't afford anything beyond the absolute most basic necessities. In a developed nation, that's barely surviving, not living.
  - randallsquared 6y ago
    This is yet another surprising thing to a lot of people: cars can be very, very cheap in the US: insurance and gas can cost more than a reliable used car. I just sold a perfectly fine car for less than $2000, having bought it new 10 years ago. Someone else will probably buy that car, after a few cosmetic things are fixed, for $3000 or so. It's spent most of its life south of Pennsylvania, so it doesn't have road salt damage, and will probably last another 10 years or more with regular oil changes, etc.
nemacol 6y ago
>$2000/month is enough to live comfortably with a personal car in low cost of living regions. If that 2k/mo comes with reasonable health insurance and some retirement plan.
- oblio 6y ago
  Hey, live like there's no tomorrow, isn't that part of the American Dream? :D
- bluGill 6y ago
  Retirement comes with medicare in the US, so there is somewhat reasonable health insurance. > The maximum possible Social Security benefit in 2020 depends on the age you begin to collect payments and is: $2,265 at age 62. $3,011 at full retirement age (65-68). $3,790 at age 70. While many do retire on less, they also contributed less over the years and so are used to living on less. However we can safely say that if you only get $2000/month you retired too early and this should have been an intentional choice - retire early to a lower standard of living.
- ahoy 6y ago
  You realize that's $24k/yr right
  - ChrisLomont 6y ago
    More than the vast majority of the world lives on, including many in first world countries. And this is pre govt transfers, which usually amount to quite a bit more in benefits.
dalbasal 6y ago
I agree that there is no "true" measure, just different measures. That said, the standard unemployment measure the author is objecting to is just as (more really) disingenuous in practice. It also stacks confusion. "Unemployment" used as a primary barometer for the labour economy. People (including journalists, politicians... high stakes stuff) assume that unemployment captures most unemployment. They don't consider that most unemployed 58 year olds are not counted because they "retired," stopped seeking work or receive a disability benefit. When/if these become substantial, the measure means very little. Every time a journalist note record high/low unemployment of X%, it's probably just as deceptive or (more likely) misleading. The measure itself means something different in 2020 than it did in 1980, or in a different country/region. At least the "true" appendage makes clear that there are differing and divergent ways to measure unemployment, and that these cn result in huge differences.
- itsoktocry 6y ago
  >They don't consider that most unemployed 58 year olds are not counted because they "retired," stopped seeking work or receive a disability benefit. Why should any of these people be considered "unemployed"? Every time there's a discussion of unemployment, or inflation, people bring up the measurements as "misleading". The BLS tracks this stuff because people in the real world need to use it, not because there's some disingenuous political purpose. There are a ton of different metrics to get a broad picture of the labour market, as defined, and they put them out there, free to use. The idea that the army of economists at the BLS don't understand things like people being retired is just wrong. We spend a lot of time criticizing journalists and politicians, but how many people bother to look at the data themselves if interested?
  - em500 6y ago
    Yup, the occasional hedonistic adjustments and product substitutions that they do for CPI is already prime fodder for perpetual inflation conspiracy stories. It will be a disaster when they do even more subjective "degrees-of-unemployment weights".
  - michaelt 6y ago
snarf21 6y ago
I agree this is a weird way to measure it but I think we don't measure it correctly. We don't measure underemployment, meaning people who used to work full time but have stopped even looking for work (*and are not retired). I'd like to see unemployment measured more like total population minus those employed.
- learc83 6y ago
  The BLS reports 6 different unemployment metrics. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm Several of them do measure underemployment.
  - alistairSH 6y ago
    This is the key. The government and media largely rely on U-3 (IIRC) when reporting unemployment. The upside is consistency - they all use the same number. The downside is this figure may not be fully representative of the economy. I would argue that U-5 or U-6 better represent the state of the economy (as it relates to employment), as both included some set of under-employed and recently-given-up would-be workers. But, we'd have to make a concerted effort to cut over to those numbers to avoid confusion.
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
      U-3 will still be useful for answering many questions even if it becomes a lesser-used stat among politicians, because it's been tracked for much longer and because it's tracked by almost every nation. You're not going to magically squeeze U-6 numbers out of Ireland in 1952. Examples: "How bad is our current recession compared to the great depression for the workforce?" "How might raising the top marginal income tax bracket to 70% affect the labor market?" "How does relaxing strict immigration policies contribute to job loss in a nation (if at all)?"
      - alistairSH 6y ago
        Absolutely true. No disagreement there. But, given an increasing income disparity between the top ~5% and bottom half, and a continuing sense of "being left behind" by many workers in labor-intensive industries, it seems doing a better job of describing those disenchanted workers (whether they be part-time at AutoZone, or recently given up looking, etc) would be beneficial to all. For one of those disenchanted employees, seeing "Unemployment is at all-time lows! The DOW is at a record high!" on the evening news (while they're working 3 part-time jobs for $9/hour and zero benefits) isn't just unhelpful, it's insulting.
tootie 6y ago
People really get hung up on the name and I can't blame them. Calling it the "Employment Index" would be a better fit. It's only ever meant as an indicator and not to be a pat answer to very complex question.
fizixer 6y ago
FTLW Unemployment Rate (FTLW: full-time living wage). Done. Wasn't that hard. Now let's not get carried away with dodging the issue, and get back to the topic of real deception, happily perpetuated, treated as gospel, by the powers that be, since time immemorial.
exotree 6y ago
2000 a month is really tight, even if you live in some of the cheapest rural towns in America. If you have a family, it’s poverty wage.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  $2000/mo take home in a cheap area is great. $2000 gross is going to be a lesson about taxes.
  - phil21 6y ago
    > $2000 gross is going to be a lesson about taxes. Depends on state and family status, but probably not. Someone making $28k/yr is paying pretty much FICA taxes and not much else federally speaking. If they happen to have any dependents then they are probably paying negative tax rates via the EITC. Sometimes substantially so. Source: I do taxes for a about a dozen folks "back home" growing up in a more economically disadvantaged area than average.
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Throws the ordinary unemployment rate into the category of 'false', which I agree with. To class 'any job' as employment is unhelpful and greatly misleading. I'd prefer a measure of total working class income perhaps, maybe a ratio with cost of living. Then we'd know what all these jobs add up to exactly. Counting heads is hardly a 'true' rate of employment.
tjr225 6y ago
> $2000/month is enough to live comfortably with a personal car in low cost of living regions. I really doubt this to be true. You would almost have to choose to live in a place with no opportunity to advance upward for this to be the case .
- blix 6y ago
  I live in a major US city for $2k/mo. It's not that hard. And if I lived in a cheaper area or city I could be much more comfortable. I think living on about this income is common for grad students, who mostly live in areas with "opportunity to advance upward".
  - antidaily 6y ago
    $2000k = $2,000,000. And sorry, even that isn't enough to live comfortably in SF.
    - blix 6y ago
      Oops. That's what I get for staying up too late. I wouldn't wish living in SF on my worst enemy.
      - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
        I think most of my worst enemies already live there voluntarily.
  - hanniabu 6y ago
    What city could that possibly be? You must be living in a paid off house and act like everyone has that luxury.
    - blix 6y ago
      I pay rent. Finding a place to live for under $1k/mo is really only hard in a few cities. In many places you can do better if you can buy.
wiether 6y ago
> $2000/month is enough to live comfortably with a personal car Weird how you assimilate living comfortably and having a car.
maerF0x0 6y ago
IMO labor participation rate is a better, existing, metric for understanding what is happening with labor, cross racially. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab... You can see that starting 2013 and continuing on even under trump African American + Latinx labor force participation has made relative gains compared to White+Asian. I believe this is why some claim that Trump has been good for African Americans, though really the trend started under Obama. (And I'll concede who knows what really is the causal factor...) https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab... IMO Labor Participation Rate is also useful because it helps illustrate what percentage of the population is bearing the labor load of the society.
anthony_romeo 6y ago
I completely agree, and reports on unemployment rates are one of my biggest Internet peeves: "The official unemployment rate is artificially depressed by excluding people who might be earning only a few dollars a week." This reads like paranoia. Regardless of how U-3 originated, U-3 reflects an international standard of defining "unemployment". If different countries use different definitions of unemployment in their studies, then meaningfully comparing unemployment statistics among countries is futile (or just really really difficult). I guess one could argue that, say, U-6 should be the international standard. But whatever definition one uses doesn't actually change anything in the real world. The different measures are trying to describe reality, not define the magical all-true unemployment rate. The point is to look at many different definitions to identify trends. Attempts to blindly point at U-6 and say that this is more "real" than U-3 is just as deceptive as claiming success over lowering the U-3 rate (even if it's because people are leaving the labor force). It should be up to outlets like Axios to explain these nuances rather than argue that one measure is more "true" than another.
- abfan1127 6y ago
  this is the first time I've seen U3 and U6. I didn't realize BLS had different stats. For those interested, here is their definitions. https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm
didibus 6y ago
Article does start with: > A person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a living wage — but who can't find one — is unemployed. If you accept that definition, the true unemployment rate in the U.S. is a stunning 26.1% I admit the word "true" in the title is kind of misleading, but the article itself isn't.
- smsm42 6y ago
  > A person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a living wage — but who can't find one — is unemployed "living wage" here adds a layer of confusion. Some argue "living wage" is at least $15 an hour, some argue even more. Certainly living in San Francisco on $15 an hour wage, even working fulltime, would be a challenge. However, this has nothing to do with "unemployment" as it is commonly understood. This is just confusing separate economic and societal problems to arrive at flashy number that actually doesn't mean much, as it is a result of different people having different economic and personal challenges.
  - klyrs 6y ago
    It's not that deep, or confusing. If you look at the unemployment chart, it has a caption. Data: Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity; Chart: Axios Visuals The source for that data is a hyperlink to [1], which defines the living wage at $20,000 per year before taxes. > What is the “True Rate of Unemployment”? The True Rate of Unemployment, as defined by the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP), measures the percentage of the U.S. labor force that is functionally unemployed. > Using data compiled by the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $20,000 annually before taxes. > Just as an accurate census is a prerequisite to funding American communities equitably, policymakers depend on economic indicators to shape economic policy. LISEP developed the True Rate of Unemployment to provide analysts and decision-makers with a more accurate measure of Americans’ financial well-being. > For a more in-depth explanation of the True Rate of Unemployment, please reference this white paper[2]. [1] https://www.lisep.org/ https://www.lisep.org/ [2] https://assets.website-files.com/5f67c16a6ca3251ecc11eca7/5f8493c8d27be6544c753788_LISEP%20White%20Paper.pdf https://assets.website-files.com/5f67c16a6ca3251ecc11eca7/5f...
anm89 6y ago
Completely disagree. Yes there is some level of subjectivity here but the definition this article is using is muchcloser to the definition to what an uninformed person would assume whereas the traditional definition is intentionally deceptive. So no, it is not "the one true unemployment rate" but it is a lot truer as perceived by the average person than the standard definition.
- syndacks 6y ago
  Yes, I completely agree with you. The top comment, like many top comments on HN, fails to understand the bigger picture/message, and instead nitpicks one thing thus making everything "false". It's a really, really said phenomena amongst this hyper logical crowd.
jonas21 6y ago
I generally agree with you, but in this particular case, they defined "living wage" very conservatively as $20,000/year [1], which is $1667/month or $9.62/hr assuming a 40-hour week. So, if anything, I'd say it's low-balling the number. [1] https://www.lisep.org/ https://www.lisep.org/
wsinks 6y ago
Right - the second that they included 16-17 year olds in this, I started to pay less attention. I do want to go back to this and look further to see if I can glean out that demographic as well.
deleted 6y ago
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charwalker 6y ago
Different Unemployment Rates are defined and calculated differently because they are different. Simply listing a number called the unemployment rate is in itself disingenuous as the context of what type of rate is important. But it's easy for an article to list a number that fits their narrative and not explain what the number means. The context matters, per usual.
chaostheory 6y ago
Reminds me of the official interest rate. I don't think it even goes by original CPI calculations anymore.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
I thought the title was okay—I got exactly what I expected. "True Unemployment Rate" implies "I don't think our standard measure of employment accurately captures the state of the economy" which then implies "I'm going to provide my own metric, and explain why it's different and why I think it's better."
throwaway2245 6y ago
I think the problem that Unemployment has been a Key Performance Indicator for government that has now been completely gamed by the government to the point of being useless as an indicator. I don't think that trying to come up with an improved metric which highlights the real situation on the ground is 'deceptive'.
dmode 6y ago
I believe the other rate has been traditionally called "underemployment"

AQXt 6y ago

> $2000/month is enough to live comfortably with a personal car in low cost of living regions. In NYC it means you are probably stacked into a decaying apartment with many other people with no car. It's funny how many Americans conflate "living" with the possession of a car...

sebmellen 6y ago
In many regions of the US, it's a simple necessity to have a car, just as it might be in more rural parts of Europe. I know people who work as farmers in the north of the Netherlands, and a car is as essential a commodity for them as it might be for a rural Midwesterner.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  "just as it might be in more rural parts of Europe." Even europeans often have this urban blindspot. In some places (eg netherlands), you may be able to live conveniently without a car. For a lot of places (eg >50% of ireland), not having a car is a major lifestyle inhibitor. Transport (or lack thereof) dictates a lot of your life... from work opportunities to whether or not you can access a supermarket.
  - bkor 6y ago
    > In some places (eg netherlands) That's because Netherlands changed the country to not rely on cars. It used to rely on cars, just like most countries. It's still far from perfect; there's still loads of places where there are not enough options. Car-only places is considered restrictive. Similarly, kids should be able to do things on their own. Seems nowadays kids rely on their parents to move them around. That's pretty crazy IMO. Any other country could do the same. Also people in Netherlands complained that "government is going after cars", etc.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      The population density in the Netherlands is one of the highest in the world, higher than any American state and 14 times higher than the US as a whole. So public transportation infrastructure that makes sense in the Netherlands isn't necessarily going to be practical elsewhere.
      - apexalpha 6y ago
        While you are correct the Netherlands has a higher pop density it really doesn't matter, for a country as a whole. See, Russia has a population density of 8.4/km2 (vs 33km2 in US). But that doesn't stop Russian cities from building public transport. Just like how empty acreage and dessert wouldn't stop US cities from building decent public transport. What matters is not the average density of the country, but the layouts of the cities. A good example is NYC. According to your statement it shouldn't have public transport because the average of the country is too sparsely populated, but that doesn't really matter. Just like how the empty tundra in Russia doesn't prevent Moscow or St Peterburg from building public transport.
        Mvandenbergh 6y ago
        Indeed. You really have to look at settlement patterns and not just a single scalar density. What makes public transport difficult in the US is that suburbs are dense enough that a lot of people live there but not dense enough to put in efficient public transport. If you drew a histogram of the Russian population sorted by density, you would find that a very large % of the population lived in dense local areas and a relatively small population is spread over the vast rural parts of the country. Not even just tundra, even Russia West of the Urals is very sparsely populated for the most part.
- gambiting 6y ago
  Exactly - in Poland there are some regions which are very poor by any definition, and yet every home will have 2-3 cars simply because it's impossible to get anywhere without one. Yeah there is some public transport, but it's often very infrequent or not going where people need to be.
- enragedcacti 6y ago
  I think it is important to note that this isn't just a problem related geography or sprawl. I live in Fairfax County just outside of DC. It's pretty populous (1.15 million) but getting anywhere is still a challenge if you don't live within walking distance of an Orange Line metro stop. This assumes that the metro hasn't caught on fire recently or that the line hasn't been shut down for multiple months for repairs. Bus timetables are so spread out that a 20 minute drive is a 2-3 hour bus ride in a lot of cases. Sprawl certainly plays a part but lack of investment in public transport is big reason why cars are so essential.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  It's certainly not a necessity in NYC though, which was the example given. In most big cities in the US you're better off not having a car if you're poor, since cars are a big ongoing expense. Hell, I'm very far from poor and I'm best off not having a car in NYC.
  - Grazester 6y ago
    I think not having a car in NYC is more of a convenience issue than a cost issue(due to parking etc) to a larger degree. The assumption here is that you are not just barely getting by.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      It's both. Insurance and parking are very expensive. If you don't want to pay for parking then you need to budget several hours of your time each week just moving your car around to different parking spots.
      - Grazester 6y ago
        ..and thank you for reminding me I have to move my car this evening! Insurance is costly compared to other states. I pay about $1200/year for full everything though(windshield damaged and highway touring). A friend of mine was just quoted $3000/year for insurance on an Audi. For that I would ride a bicycle everywhere.
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culopatin 6y ago
I think it’s because of the way the country was built. Getting from A to B without a car is drastically worse, and it adds up to a proportionally bad quality of living unless you happen to live in a walkable older city (NYC, Boston for example). In some places like Florida your nearest store could be 4 miles away. The bus here is so underutilized and so inconvenient that I don’t think I’ve ever considered. A 30m drive is a 2h bus ride.
- deleted 6y ago
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selykg 6y ago
In a lot of rural areas, like where I am, there is no such thing as public transportation. If you don't have a car you can maybe make due during the spring and fall months where the temperatures are reasonable. But it's going to be hell during winter (gets cold enough and there's enough snow a bike won't work for you) and during summer it gets too hot. I'm a 5 minute drive to the nearest grocery store. For a walk, that's about 3-ish miles. On a bike, not so bad, but also keep in mind there's no bike lane or anything so you're sharing the road with cars. There's some added risk to that. A car isn't a requirement, but it makes a massive difference in your ability to live.
bboylen 6y ago
In many areas of the country it is very, very challenging to get anywhere without one. I don't think access to grocery store / work is necessarily trivial to life.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
a personal car is a big expense. If you can live comfortably in a region with a personal car then it is a significantly different metric than you can live comfortably without a personal car. Also the way the U.S is structured living comfortably without a personal car means you must be living somewhere where you can work without that personal car, which is a rare job to have, meaning that you can be locked into your employer. Or is that the funny part you're referring to? on edit: I see lots of people made my second point as well.
cpursley 6y ago
Well, in most places in the US you literally can't go without a vehicle if you want employment and food. Even if you're physically proximate to food and other activities of daily living, there are often no sidewalks or paths to safely walk or bike there. There's also a social stigma of walking (the person must be poor or lost their license for drunk driving).
- bkor 6y ago
  > Well, in most places in the US you literally can't go without a vehicle if you want employment and food. That's due to zoning laws being the way that they are. If you'd change the way you'd build up and zone things it would be possible. The YouTube channel "Not Just Bikes" goes into this in various videos. I couldn't find the exact video that explained the zoning laws, did find another: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul_xzyCDT98 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul_xzyCDT98 (kids in Netherlands go to school on their own). Despite Netherlands being considered great for cyclists there's loads to improve. The channel goes into that detail as well, e.g. that major roads are being closed. See e.g. this video of a big road being closed in Utrecht: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fePpwYCs_JM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fePpwYCs_JM (different channel)
horsawlarway 6y ago
What's your point? Outside of a very small number of major metro areas, cities in America are not livable without a car. And I say that as someone who really, really despises how required car ownership is, and who has spent a lot of time trying to find alternatives. Even in reasonably large metro areas where there is a decent bus system, and a passable metro (Atlanta, in this case) a nice E-bike is still nowhere near enough to replace my car. I've managed to replace the car for my daily commute with a ~40 minute Marta ride, and an additional 20 minutes on the bike (Would be an additional 40+ if I used the buses), but the metro doesn't come within 20 miles of either of my parents houses, nor does it get me to my brother who lives in Athens, GA. Nor does it get me anywhere close to my grandparents. I wouldn't have been able to visit my now wife while dating without a car. I'm assuming you're not American, but if you haven't visited for a while, I suspect you're just wrong about any sense of scale you might have. Atlanta alone has a metro area of 8400 square miles. Houston is 10,000 square miles. My wife's family has this problem. They're from Taiwan. When I first visited they warned me about a long car ride to see some family in the country. Long meant 40 minutes. 40 minutes barely gets you across Atlanta. 2 hours gets you to Athens if traffic is decent. 2 hours 30 minutes the a different direction will get you to my family in north GA (and Atlanta is already well in the north half of GA). I can drive south at 80 mph for 4 freaking hours and still be in GA.
- spdionis 6y ago
  You have to realize, using miles to convey the "sense of scale" to non-Americans is ironic because... we can't be bothered to understand how much 10000 square "miles" actually is.
  - ovi256 6y ago
    For those with high school math ability, it's doable to notice that 10000 sqm is the area of a square with side 100 m, so about a patch of 160 km by 160 km.
  - treeman79 6y ago
    Swap miles for km. It’s about the same for arbitrary vastness. Well under an order of magnitude off.
thegginthesky 6y ago
I can't assume where you are from but, as a non-American who lived in distinct parts of the US, I can tell you a bit about why a car is essential for living to many Americans. Firstly, the US is different from many parts of the world. Not only it's massive, but swaths of American urbanization are shaped around cars as a basic necessity, especially with the adoption of suburbs. Most of the US outside of big cities are car-first towns both in infrastructure, planning, and services. In turn, having a car for many Americans is more than an efficient way to get around, it is the only way to move safely and reliably. Many parts of the US have no public transportation, no reliable ride-sharing, no safe way to bike (both the roads and the culture are hostile towards cyclists). For more information, I'd suggest reading on the phenomena called "Automotive city" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_city
- bsanr2 6y ago
  It should be noted that this was not an accident, but the result of a concerted effort by corporate interests with major influence in state and federal gov't via professional connections and their control of the labor market. This not only involved the dismantling of existing, car-agnostic infrastructure - clearly, as most major American cities existed and were designed to provide for the needs of its residents before the existence of the automobile - but also represented yet another chapter in the history of collusion between private and gov't entities in the interest of maintaining America's toxic race and class order.
  - bottled_poe 6y ago
    I would be interested in reading more about this topic if you have any recommended references?
    - nullstyle 6y ago
      I'm not the GP, but I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_Am... might be a good fit if you're interested in this arena.
Frost1x 6y ago
It's an absolute necessity, it's not a luxury contrary to the way it may be painted or viewed externally. Unless you want to diverge from efficiency expectations in modern society needed to work a job and instead move out to an Amish farm of sorts, you're going to need a car. I'd love to have a viable efficient public transit system, infrastructure, or culture built around it but it simply doesn't exist for well over the vast majority of Americans. All other transit options simply aren't viable alternatives.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>It's funny how many Americans conflate "living" with the possession of a car... It's funny how out of touch many non-Americans (and to a greater than one would think extent, upper middle class Americans who live in a few select cities) are with the realities of day to day life in most of the US. Except in a few select areas where transit is very good and the cost of owning a car is very high owning your own personal means of transportation goes hand in hand with a major quality of life improvement and it compounds your relative earning potential (by giving you more flexibility to work more lucrative jobs or reduce cost of living). There's a reason it comes third after shelter and employment in the list of things you get as soon as you're out of jail (or a coma).
confidantlake 6y ago
I am an American that does not own a car since I live in a city and can live without one. However, for the vast majority of Americans a car is a necessity. There are places with no public transportation and no sidewalks. The only way to get around is to drive.
jjk166 6y ago
You can get a low end new car with a payment of only around $200/mo and buying used is significantly cheaper still. You don't necessarily need to possess a car, but if you don't have the financial means to possess a car then you really can't afford anything beyond the absolute most basic necessities. In a developed nation, that's barely surviving, not living.
- randallsquared 6y ago
  This is yet another surprising thing to a lot of people: cars can be very, very cheap in the US: insurance and gas can cost more than a reliable used car. I just sold a perfectly fine car for less than $2000, having bought it new 10 years ago. Someone else will probably buy that car, after a few cosmetic things are fixed, for $3000 or so. It's spent most of its life south of Pennsylvania, so it doesn't have road salt damage, and will probably last another 10 years or more with regular oil changes, etc.

nemacol 6y ago

>$2000/month is enough to live comfortably with a personal car in low cost of living regions. If that 2k/mo comes with reasonable health insurance and some retirement plan.

oblio 6y ago
Hey, live like there's no tomorrow, isn't that part of the American Dream? :D
bluGill 6y ago
Retirement comes with medicare in the US, so there is somewhat reasonable health insurance. > The maximum possible Social Security benefit in 2020 depends on the age you begin to collect payments and is: $2,265 at age 62. $3,011 at full retirement age (65-68). $3,790 at age 70. While many do retire on less, they also contributed less over the years and so are used to living on less. However we can safely say that if you only get $2000/month you retired too early and this should have been an intentional choice - retire early to a lower standard of living.
ahoy 6y ago
You realize that's $24k/yr right
- ChrisLomont 6y ago
  More than the vast majority of the world lives on, including many in first world countries. And this is pre govt transfers, which usually amount to quite a bit more in benefits.

dalbasal 6y ago

I agree that there is no "true" measure, just different measures. That said, the standard unemployment measure the author is objecting to is just as (more really) disingenuous in practice. It also stacks confusion. "Unemployment" used as a primary barometer for the labour economy. People (including journalists, politicians... high stakes stuff) assume that unemployment captures most unemployment. They don't consider that most unemployed 58 year olds are not counted because they "retired," stopped seeking work or receive a disability benefit. When/if these become substantial, the measure means very little. Every time a journalist note record high/low unemployment of X%, it's probably just as deceptive or (more likely) misleading. The measure itself means something different in 2020 than it did in 1980, or in a different country/region. At least the "true" appendage makes clear that there are differing and divergent ways to measure unemployment, and that these cn result in huge differences.

itsoktocry 6y ago
>They don't consider that most unemployed 58 year olds are not counted because they "retired," stopped seeking work or receive a disability benefit. Why should any of these people be considered "unemployed"? Every time there's a discussion of unemployment, or inflation, people bring up the measurements as "misleading". The BLS tracks this stuff because people in the real world need to use it, not because there's some disingenuous political purpose. There are a ton of different metrics to get a broad picture of the labour market, as defined, and they put them out there, free to use. The idea that the army of economists at the BLS don't understand things like people being retired is just wrong. We spend a lot of time criticizing journalists and politicians, but how many people bother to look at the data themselves if interested?
- em500 6y ago
  Yup, the occasional hedonistic adjustments and product substitutions that they do for CPI is already prime fodder for perpetual inflation conspiracy stories. It will be a disaster when they do even more subjective "degrees-of-unemployment weights".
- michaelt 6y ago

snarf21 6y ago

I agree this is a weird way to measure it but I think we don't measure it correctly. We don't measure underemployment, meaning people who used to work full time but have stopped even looking for work (*and are not retired). I'd like to see unemployment measured more like total population minus those employed.

learc83 6y ago
The BLS reports 6 different unemployment metrics. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm Several of them do measure underemployment.
- alistairSH 6y ago
  This is the key. The government and media largely rely on U-3 (IIRC) when reporting unemployment. The upside is consistency - they all use the same number. The downside is this figure may not be fully representative of the economy. I would argue that U-5 or U-6 better represent the state of the economy (as it relates to employment), as both included some set of under-employed and recently-given-up would-be workers. But, we'd have to make a concerted effort to cut over to those numbers to avoid confusion.
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
    U-3 will still be useful for answering many questions even if it becomes a lesser-used stat among politicians, because it's been tracked for much longer and because it's tracked by almost every nation. You're not going to magically squeeze U-6 numbers out of Ireland in 1952. Examples: "How bad is our current recession compared to the great depression for the workforce?" "How might raising the top marginal income tax bracket to 70% affect the labor market?" "How does relaxing strict immigration policies contribute to job loss in a nation (if at all)?"
    - alistairSH 6y ago
      Absolutely true. No disagreement there. But, given an increasing income disparity between the top ~5% and bottom half, and a continuing sense of "being left behind" by many workers in labor-intensive industries, it seems doing a better job of describing those disenchanted workers (whether they be part-time at AutoZone, or recently given up looking, etc) would be beneficial to all. For one of those disenchanted employees, seeing "Unemployment is at all-time lows! The DOW is at a record high!" on the evening news (while they're working 3 part-time jobs for $9/hour and zero benefits) isn't just unhelpful, it's insulting.

tootie 6y ago

People really get hung up on the name and I can't blame them. Calling it the "Employment Index" would be a better fit. It's only ever meant as an indicator and not to be a pat answer to very complex question.

fizixer 6y ago

FTLW Unemployment Rate (FTLW: full-time living wage). Done. Wasn't that hard. Now let's not get carried away with dodging the issue, and get back to the topic of real deception, happily perpetuated, treated as gospel, by the powers that be, since time immemorial.

exotree 6y ago

2000 a month is really tight, even if you live in some of the cheapest rural towns in America. If you have a family, it’s poverty wage.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
$2000/mo take home in a cheap area is great. $2000 gross is going to be a lesson about taxes.
- phil21 6y ago
  > $2000 gross is going to be a lesson about taxes. Depends on state and family status, but probably not. Someone making $28k/yr is paying pretty much FICA taxes and not much else federally speaking. If they happen to have any dependents then they are probably paying negative tax rates via the EITC. Sometimes substantially so. Source: I do taxes for a about a dozen folks "back home" growing up in a more economically disadvantaged area than average.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

Throws the ordinary unemployment rate into the category of 'false', which I agree with. To class 'any job' as employment is unhelpful and greatly misleading. I'd prefer a measure of total working class income perhaps, maybe a ratio with cost of living. Then we'd know what all these jobs add up to exactly. Counting heads is hardly a 'true' rate of employment.

tjr225 6y ago

> $2000/month is enough to live comfortably with a personal car in low cost of living regions. I really doubt this to be true. You would almost have to choose to live in a place with no opportunity to advance upward for this to be the case .

blix 6y ago
I live in a major US city for $2k/mo. It's not that hard. And if I lived in a cheaper area or city I could be much more comfortable. I think living on about this income is common for grad students, who mostly live in areas with "opportunity to advance upward".
- antidaily 6y ago
  $2000k = $2,000,000. And sorry, even that isn't enough to live comfortably in SF.
  - blix 6y ago
    Oops. That's what I get for staying up too late. I wouldn't wish living in SF on my worst enemy.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      I think most of my worst enemies already live there voluntarily.
- hanniabu 6y ago
  What city could that possibly be? You must be living in a paid off house and act like everyone has that luxury.
  - blix 6y ago
    I pay rent. Finding a place to live for under $1k/mo is really only hard in a few cities. In many places you can do better if you can buy.

wiether 6y ago

> $2000/month is enough to live comfortably with a personal car Weird how you assimilate living comfortably and having a car.

maerF0x0 6y ago

IMO labor participation rate is a better, existing, metric for understanding what is happening with labor, cross racially. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab... You can see that starting 2013 and continuing on even under trump African American + Latinx labor force participation has made relative gains compared to White+Asian. I believe this is why some claim that Trump has been good for African Americans, though really the trend started under Obama. (And I'll concede who knows what really is the causal factor...) https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab... IMO Labor Participation Rate is also useful because it helps illustrate what percentage of the population is bearing the labor load of the society.

anthony_romeo 6y ago

I completely agree, and reports on unemployment rates are one of my biggest Internet peeves: "The official unemployment rate is artificially depressed by excluding people who might be earning only a few dollars a week." This reads like paranoia. Regardless of how U-3 originated, U-3 reflects an international standard of defining "unemployment". If different countries use different definitions of unemployment in their studies, then meaningfully comparing unemployment statistics among countries is futile (or just really really difficult). I guess one could argue that, say, U-6 should be the international standard. But whatever definition one uses doesn't actually change anything in the real world. The different measures are trying to describe reality, not define the magical all-true unemployment rate. The point is to look at many different definitions to identify trends. Attempts to blindly point at U-6 and say that this is more "real" than U-3 is just as deceptive as claiming success over lowering the U-3 rate (even if it's because people are leaving the labor force). It should be up to outlets like Axios to explain these nuances rather than argue that one measure is more "true" than another.

abfan1127 6y ago
this is the first time I've seen U3 and U6. I didn't realize BLS had different stats. For those interested, here is their definitions. https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm

didibus 6y ago

Article does start with: > A person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a living wage — but who can't find one — is unemployed. If you accept that definition, the true unemployment rate in the U.S. is a stunning 26.1% I admit the word "true" in the title is kind of misleading, but the article itself isn't.

smsm42 6y ago
> A person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a living wage — but who can't find one — is unemployed "living wage" here adds a layer of confusion. Some argue "living wage" is at least $15 an hour, some argue even more. Certainly living in San Francisco on $15 an hour wage, even working fulltime, would be a challenge. However, this has nothing to do with "unemployment" as it is commonly understood. This is just confusing separate economic and societal problems to arrive at flashy number that actually doesn't mean much, as it is a result of different people having different economic and personal challenges.
- klyrs 6y ago
  It's not that deep, or confusing. If you look at the unemployment chart, it has a caption. Data: Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity; Chart: Axios Visuals The source for that data is a hyperlink to [1], which defines the living wage at $20,000 per year before taxes. > What is the “True Rate of Unemployment”? The True Rate of Unemployment, as defined by the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP), measures the percentage of the U.S. labor force that is functionally unemployed. > Using data compiled by the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $20,000 annually before taxes. > Just as an accurate census is a prerequisite to funding American communities equitably, policymakers depend on economic indicators to shape economic policy. LISEP developed the True Rate of Unemployment to provide analysts and decision-makers with a more accurate measure of Americans’ financial well-being. > For a more in-depth explanation of the True Rate of Unemployment, please reference this white paper[2]. [1] https://www.lisep.org/ https://www.lisep.org/ [2] https://assets.website-files.com/5f67c16a6ca3251ecc11eca7/5f8493c8d27be6544c753788_LISEP%20White%20Paper.pdf https://assets.website-files.com/5f67c16a6ca3251ecc11eca7/5f...

anm89 6y ago

Completely disagree. Yes there is some level of subjectivity here but the definition this article is using is muchcloser to the definition to what an uninformed person would assume whereas the traditional definition is intentionally deceptive. So no, it is not "the one true unemployment rate" but it is a lot truer as perceived by the average person than the standard definition.

syndacks 6y ago
Yes, I completely agree with you. The top comment, like many top comments on HN, fails to understand the bigger picture/message, and instead nitpicks one thing thus making everything "false". It's a really, really said phenomena amongst this hyper logical crowd.

jonas21 6y ago

I generally agree with you, but in this particular case, they defined "living wage" very conservatively as $20,000/year [1], which is $1667/month or $9.62/hr assuming a 40-hour week. So, if anything, I'd say it's low-balling the number. [1] https://www.lisep.org/ https://www.lisep.org/

wsinks 6y ago

Right - the second that they included 16-17 year olds in this, I started to pay less attention. I do want to go back to this and look further to see if I can glean out that demographic as well.

deleted 6y ago

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charwalker 6y ago

Different Unemployment Rates are defined and calculated differently because they are different. Simply listing a number called the unemployment rate is in itself disingenuous as the context of what type of rate is important. But it's easy for an article to list a number that fits their narrative and not explain what the number means. The context matters, per usual.

chaostheory 6y ago

Reminds me of the official interest rate. I don't think it even goes by original CPI calculations anymore.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

I thought the title was okay—I got exactly what I expected. "True Unemployment Rate" implies "I don't think our standard measure of employment accurately captures the state of the economy" which then implies "I'm going to provide my own metric, and explain why it's different and why I think it's better."

throwaway2245 6y ago

I think the problem that Unemployment has been a Key Performance Indicator for government that has now been completely gamed by the government to the point of being useless as an indicator. I don't think that trying to come up with an improved metric which highlights the real situation on the ground is 'deceptive'.

dmode 6y ago

I believe the other rate has been traditionally called "underemployment"