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Number Unemployed for 27 Weeks and Over
- roughly 6y agoJust a quick reminder that this is because of the pandemic, and not because of intrinsic factors in the economy or natural business cycle or any of that sort of thing.
- kortilla 6y agoWell it was. That distinction will become less clear when we re-open as this damage turns out to have been very permanent to many businesses.
- petr_tik 6y agoHow are pandemics not “intrinsic factors in the economy”? We’ve lived through a dozen documented pandemics and can find records of ports and seaside trading hubs dealing with them. The etymology of the word quarantine is related to the amount of time a foreign vessel was isolated at a port before it was allowed to enter the city. Implying that such spikes in unemployment or any other economic metrics aren’t representative of business as usual is a grave underestimate of how usual the business of pandemics and natural disasters is.
- devoutsalsa 6y agoI kind of think of it as the economy gets kicked in the crotch every ~10 +/- a few years by something, but it’s usually a different something every time.
- roughly 6y agoI should have said "endogenous." The difference between 2020, 2008, and 2001 is that in 2001 there was a substantial overinvestment in an unproven field, in 2008 there was a widespread underpricing of risk, and in 2020 a virus hit. 2020 doesn't say anything* about the broader economy - there's nothing "wrong" in the 2019 economy to inform 2020 or 2021 or beyond. The difference is worth noting because an awful lot of the punditry's model for recessions is to assume there needs to be a structural adjustment that involves some amount of turmoil and there's nothing that should be done to prevent that. In this case, there's no reason to assume that, and no reason to assume that economic turmoil is either necessary or beneficial. A disaster happened, and we should view it like a structure fire, not a bankruptcy. *except of course that a huge portion of the country has a precarious living situation, our health care system is a disaster, and our political system was wholly unprepared for any actual challenge. There's all kinds of deep foundational ills in the economy, but none of those would have caused a sudden severe spike in unemployment absent the pandemic.
- riffic 6y agothe concept of antifragility would like to have a word with your thesis.
- throwawayboise 6y agoWe haven't had a pandemic remotely approaching 2020/21 in at least 100 years. It's clearly a black swan event, not an intrinsic factor in the economy.
- hanniabu 6y agoDo I sense sarcasm?
- thatguy0900 6y agoSomeone should tell that to all the stores that will never reopen
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hprotagonist 6y agowithout any dog in this fight at all, it'd be interesting to see either this data overlaid with total estimated population, or this data scaled to percentage of the population. The shape of the trend won't change; the relative amplitudes of the peaks might.
- iandanforth 6y agoYou can do this directly in the tool. Click 'Edit Graph' Select the series 'Population' (Thousands, Not Seasonally Adjusted). Click 'Add' Modify the formula to be 'a/b'. Click 'Apply'.
- hprotagonist 6y agohuh. 1983 looks slightly worse, but that's really about it.
- tuatoru 6y agoDividing the U+27w by working age population shows that the variation is between 0.4% at the bottom of the dips and 2.0% currently.
- jimmytucson 6y agoThis gives me a chance to make my favorite prediction, because it’s always right. There will be a recession. Soon. I mean, I can’t say for sure. I’m not a fortune teller. But I can give you a lot of reasons why. Let’s just say, it’s coming. It might be a little later than “soon”, but I’m betting it’s sooner than later. (Not with actual retirement money.)
- riffic 6y agoThe punchline is to say that's how business cycles work. It's how they've always worked and no cycle is immune to an inevitable downturn.
- treyfitty 6y agoWe've been in a recession since February 2020, as defined by the NBER. FYI, the NBER is the definitive authority that has the official duty of tracking recessions. https://www.nber.org/research/data/us-business-cycle-expansions-and-contractions https://www.nber.org/research/data/us-business-cycle-expansi...
- riffic 6y agothe metacomment here is that recessions will always occur, and the next one is around the (indeterminate) corner.
- riffic 6y agoalso why the hell was jimmytucson's comment here downvoted to dead and flagged? are people really that ignorant about the inevitability of a recession? business cycles are called cycles for a reason folks.
- bowmessage 6y agoNot if we print a few more billions of dollars, there won't! /s
- naebother 6y agoI wonder how much of this is just people no longer able to claim unemployment. Maybe things are different with the current downturn, but I don't remember states extending unemployment benefits for the 08 crash. Also wonder what the quality of the job is compared to before being unemployed. > Workers in most states are eligible for up to 26 weeks of benefits from the regular state-funded unemployment compensation program, although seven states provide fewer weeks and one provides more. https://www.cbpp.org/research/economy/how-many-weeks-of-unemployment-compensation-are-available https://www.cbpp.org/research/economy/how-many-weeks-of-unem...
- gruez 6y ago>I wonder how much of this is just people no longer able to claim unemployment. Can you elaborate on this? If people are unable to claim unemployment, shouldn't that incentivize them to get a job, causing the figure to go down?
- Igelau 6y agoIn my state I had to provide a log of my attempts to get employed, so Unemployment Benefits never disincentivized me in the first place. After my benefit ran out, more opportunities didn't magically appear. I was still just as incentivized and still just as jobless.
- mandelbrotwurst 6y agoIt would incentivize them to get jobs, but it wouldn’t necessarily mean that they’d be able to. They might even become less likely to find work as they’re less able to meet their basic needs.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- naebother 6y agoI thought these numbers were unemployment claims, but looking into it a bit more seems like this is a survey. I was confused by if you can only claim unemployment for on average 26 weeks, then the number of people unemployed for 27 weeks or over would not include those people. But a survey would probably account for these people.
- GhostVII 6y agoPretty surprising how long it takes to recover from recessions. It took almost 10 years for the numbers to recover from after 2008, way longer than I would have assumed.
- xxpor 6y ago2008 was uniquely bad. The numbers after 2000 wouldn't be that terrible.
- akamaka 6y agoI’m one of them. Got laid off from a VC-funded startup early in the pandemic, and never quite figured out how to adjust to this new work environment. I spend my time coding for fun and doing the occasional very awkward job interview over Zoom.
- dmead 6y agowhy is interviewing on zoom awkward?
- mhh__ 6y agoMy perspective: If it goes well for the first few moments it's all good, I had a semi-interview that basically turned into a 4hr chat about programming, foreign policy etc (I suspect the boredom contributes). If it goes badly, not only am I being watched and inspected by potentially more than one person, I can also see myself. I hate the sound of my own voice, I really hate the look of my own mouth let alone face.
- akamaka 6y agoI imagine that Youtubers would be the winners in this new interviewing world, since they’ve spent so much time getting comfortable with their on-camera appearance.
- akamaka 6y agoGood question. In my case, I’ve always been good at in-person interviews. I’ll be nervous at first, but over the course of the interview, I can read the body language of everyone in the room and quickly get comfortable, and by the end of a successful interview everyone shakes hands and comes away feeling like I’m nearly part of the team. On Zoom, it starts off the same way, but never gets better. I can’t really tell if anyone is really satisfied by my answers, and I’ll either ramble on, or end with “I’m not really sure I answered your question...” At the end of the interview, they’ll invite me to ask some questions of my own, and I try to go in depth into understanding how they approach collaborating remotely. I feel like the answers are sometimes evasive and I come away wondering if my questions are too intrusive. Maybe a lot of teams have disagreements about this, and I shouldn’t ask them openly?
- cobraetor 6y agoWhat was the cause of the big spike around 2010? What approach did the then US president take about it?
- matthewowen 6y agoThere was a big recession, idk if you remember it. When people are laid off it takes 6 months for them to have been unemployed for 27 weeks.
- cobraetor 6y agoGreat recession? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recession https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recession
- matthewowen 6y agoYes that's the joke.
- mhh__ 6y ago> idk if you remember it There are people coming "online" so to speak who weren't consciously making memories until years after the recession hit. I am now the ripe old age of 20, I have no knowledge of it whatsoever. I know some people significantly younger than me who could write well enough you wouldn't know it.
- matthewowen 6y agoSure, but the linked page _literally shades recessions in grey_. It's pretty hard to miss. IDK, I just think it's funny is all.
- mhh__ 6y agoYep. I was just adding some colour
- 6y ago
- maxerickson 6y agoHow does this count partial layoffs (hours per week or whatever)?
- nostromo 6y agoHere's my favorite unemployment indicator: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 It's the percent of working age (25-54) adults in the labor force. The unemployment rate has lots of oddities that can make the economy seem better (or worse) than it often is. Note for example the long, slow, decline from 2008 to 2015, long after the recession was officially over -- and how we've currently erased almost all gains since that nadir.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoI find change in wages and underemployment to be better indicators than unemployment.
- TrueGeek 6y agoWhy is “working age” assumed to end at 54?
- treyfitty 6y agoIt's a vestige of the old manufacturing days.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoI wonder what the statistics are on 50+ year olds losing their jobs and/or experiencing a reduction in income. Either for cost cutting reasons (old employees are costlier to employ) or due to injuries and health issues. I would assume the probability of loss or reduction in income is significant for many people once they reach 50+.
- scrose 6y agoThe site refers to it as the ‘prime working age’ and breaks down the other age categories elsewhere. Check it out at https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2015/08/the-composition-effect-in-the-labor-force-participation-rate https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2015/08/the-composition-effe...
- 6y ago
- NhanH 6y agoInteresting. Whatever it was, Trump did have a sharp effect on employment rate.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoHow were you able to determine the cause was Trump?
- NhanH 6y agoThe chart picked up sharply starting in 2016. Lowest point was in July 2015. No one here likes Trump. But if any of you have a good explanation, I’d love to hear it, rather than whatever point it is you are trying to make.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoA claim was made, and I asked for evidence supporting the claim. Has nothing to do with liking or disliking Trump.
- NhanH 6y agoI assumed you already saw the chart. The period of increase starts right at the start of Trump's term and it seems fairly simple to make a descriptive claim like I did.
- lotsofpulp 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau... In the same chart, there was a huge decline during Trump’s tenure also, but I wouldn’t say he had something to do with it just because he was President.
- NhanH 6y agoIf you are saying that a sitting President have no effect on unemployment rate and the economy, I think it’s fair for the burden of proof to be on the detractors. The wording of my original statement was careful to avoid this whole boring “correlation does not imply causation” conversation. The negative of that statement would be one to claim Trump has no effect whatsoever on the unemployment.
- hprotagonist 6y agoMy favorite entirety ad-hoc local economic status indicator in the US is this: Pick a fast food place at random, order a numbered meal. Were you served promptly with hot food in a very clean establishment with professional staff whose average age is about 35? The local economy is fucked. Did you get a totally halfassed food like object that is ostensibly warm handed to you by someone 25 or younger who clearly doesn’t give a shit? Local economy is doing just fine.
- nradov 6y agoI remember after the first dot-com bubble burst back in 2001 the service level in Bay Area restaurants got noticeably better.
- mdocherty 6y agoThat's interesting, I saw that first hand in January staying the night in twin falls-idaho. It must be doing really well. Seattle where I live, not so much. Is this something you have read about before? Or just an observation?
- Izkata 6y agoI've read variations on it a few times. The idea is that older people who get laid off in a recession still need to get a paycheck, are willing to work for less to get something, and so end up beating out the younger people who'd normally be in these jobs just entering the workforce / doing it part-time.
- true_religion 6y agoI can give you an annectdote. Arlington, VA is the richest county in the state. Every fast food place will feature an immigrant staff which is hard working and punctual. Prince Williams County is rural, think forests and trailer parks, but the fast food joints are all staffed by bored teenagers and high college students. Checking who is the lowest on the income totem pole just seems to show if the economic situation for all adults is stable or not. Now it could be unstable due to a bad economy leading to older adults getting fired from better jobs. But it could also be due to other reasons like immigrants moving to a new area; or retirees becoming bored with their empty nests.
- bflies 6y agoFWIW, in Germany, this increase has been masked by offering companies to pay a significant part of their staff salaries. So, the same authority that pays the unemployed pays the employed with the same ratio, e.g. 67% of the net if companies apply for a full pause, means the employee doesn't have to work at all. In the peak of covid this authority paid 8M of 34M employed people next to 3 M unemployed people, so round about one third of all workers were "unemployed" for a period of time.
- pacificmint 6y agoOne of the nice things about the german system is that when the crisis is over, the companies can ramp their workforce back up near instantaneously without hiring and training. Compare that to the US where they lay people off in a down turn, only to then have to rehire and retrain once the economy picks up again.
- bflies 6y agoWhat they do is highly debatable, while it gives some stability, people now complain that they have to work again for a little more money + there is some potential to abuse the system, e.g. companies get money and their staff is still working full-time. The market might backfire at some point and we should not assume that there will be a post-covid.
- wil421 6y agoBeing laid off means the company could hire you back if conditions improve. I’ve seen laid off people rehired.