4 ms·

OECD defines a "healthy full employment" rate to be 4-6% unemployment, so the labour pool is unhealthily low already.

s3tz 5y ago
Is it measured the same way though?
c2h5oh 5y ago
Unemployed are defined as "[..] people of working age who are without work, are available for work, and have taken specific steps to find work." The question is how many people exited the workforce, because both unemployment benefits and minimum wage offer payments that just barely allow them not to starve to death. Normally people would be incentivized to find work, because even minimum wage would offer a significant upgrade over unemployment benefits, but since minimum wage is so abysmally low they couldn't have set unemployment benefits much lower or people would have literally starved. The sane solution of increasing minimum wage to incentivize people to find jobs while obvious is not very popular with wealthy political donors.
jollybean 5y ago
That 4-6% is 'healthy' definitely does not mean that lower rates are 'unhealthy'.
- prepend 5y ago
  It means they are not healthy, that is different but probably the same intent.
- creshal 5y ago
  But it does. You'll never be able to find jobs for literally everyone (mental illnesses, etc.) and want some slack in the labour pool to handle seasonal fluctuations etc. If you're literally scraping the barrel, you need to import more workers, or move jobs out of state, or automate some away etc.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    That's not unhealthy, it's just not as opportunistic as it could be ... and there's a big difference between those things. The neoliberal view would be 'more immigration because you could expand' ergo 'unhealthy/unoptimized state, increase people to make more GDP'. But that's only one view. Given a flat population, it generally actually wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for example to 'let people go' to create more slack for times of economic swings. Very low unemployment can only be characterized as 'unhealthy' from the view of 'maximizing GDP growth' for the most part.

s3tz 5y ago

Is it measured the same way though?

Unemployed are defined as "[..] people of working age who are without work, are available for work, and have taken specific steps to find work." The question is how many people exited the workforce, because both unemployment benefits and minimum wage offer payments that just barely allow them not to starve to death. Normally people would be incentivized to find work, because even minimum wage would offer a significant upgrade over unemployment benefits, but since minimum wage is so abysmally low they couldn't have set unemployment benefits much lower or people would have literally starved. The sane solution of increasing minimum wage to incentivize people to find jobs while obvious is not very popular with wealthy political donors.

jollybean 5y ago

That 4-6% is 'healthy' definitely does not mean that lower rates are 'unhealthy'.

prepend 5y ago
It means they are not healthy, that is different but probably the same intent.
creshal 5y ago
But it does. You'll never be able to find jobs for literally everyone (mental illnesses, etc.) and want some slack in the labour pool to handle seasonal fluctuations etc. If you're literally scraping the barrel, you need to import more workers, or move jobs out of state, or automate some away etc.
- jollybean 5y ago
  That's not unhealthy, it's just not as opportunistic as it could be ... and there's a big difference between those things. The neoliberal view would be 'more immigration because you could expand' ergo 'unhealthy/unoptimized state, increase people to make more GDP'. But that's only one view. Given a flat population, it generally actually wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for example to 'let people go' to create more slack for times of economic swings. Very low unemployment can only be characterized as 'unhealthy' from the view of 'maximizing GDP growth' for the most part.