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Indeed. Literally from the article: "Montana's unemployment rate was 3.8% in March". That's higher than it was before the pandemic! How is that even remotely

Indeed. Literally from the article: "Montana's unemployment rate was 3.8% in March". That's higher than it was before the pandemic! How is that even remotely consistent with a "severe labor shortage"?

numbsafari 5y ago
Per the parent, unemployment is not the same thing as workforce participation. If someone has decided to stop looking for work so that they can stay home and care for a sick family member, or take care of a child, then they are no longer counted towards the unemployment rate, even though overall workforce participation has declined.
- newacct583 5y ago
  No, that's the U-3 number which is intended to measure people actively seeking work. It's true there's a lot of subtlety with measuring and understanding unemployment statistics, but this argument is just spin, it doesn't hold. The simple truth is that workforce participation in Montana (and the rest of the US) is actually quite high right now, especially given the pandemic context. This policy is simply misguided, period. It targets the wrong people for the wrong things to solve a problem that doesn't exist. And it's actively harming the people who elected the government. All because the people making decisions choose to believe spin and not truths.
  - after_care 5y ago
    You stated your viewpoint, and claimed that the other point of viewpoint is “spin”. However you haven’t made a compelling argument why the opposing viewpoint is spin and why yours is better.
    - alexilliamson 5y ago
      Nor did the parent cite and actual number for the "quite high" workforce participation rate.
  - salawat 5y ago
    It does a pretty crappy jjob of acting as a proxy, as the only thing it does measure is people using state unemployment programs. Once you exhaust your benefit, or if you decide not to claim, you aren't counted. Some business models actually factor in usage of the unemployment system to provide continuity of workforce via keeping people solvent between rehires, further diluting the utility of the metric. After a certain age, there is a marked reluctance to hire on older workers that I've noticed, and far fewer older applicants in at least my field than I expected. It is not uncommon in so.e parts of the country for some people to be completely unaware that unemployment is even a thing they can avail themselves of, or if there is, there's so much stigma and saber rattling at "those damn fraudsters" that after you hear it enough you start to wonder whether you should really be collecting it at all. BLS - Better Lying with Statistics
dathinab 5y ago
Well if the people who lost their job do not have the right qualifications to work in the open positions, and are unlikely to get them you can have both (as it takes time (month, years) and often money (an unemployed person might not have)). Also if the jobs are so badly payed that it's going in the direction of it being better to not work even if there is no money for unemployed people you also can have a labor shortage. (Just an example, so physical taxing job which which also has a high chance of damaging your clothes and doesn't provide clothes for you can make you cost more money due to increased living cost (clothes, more food) then you might earn.) I'm not saying that any of this things are happening, just that you totally can have both high unemployment and a servere labor shortage , either due to qualifications or due to inhuman working conditions.
- newacct583 5y ago
  That's true when comparing workforces across demographics and economies, sure. Happens all the time. But here we're comparing "2019 Montana" with "2021 Montana" -- it's not like Montanans or their economy have changed that much. The clear hypothesis is that if the same people are doing the same jobs in the same economy with similar workforce participation numbers that there is no "severe" employment shortage".
  - lazyasciiart 5y ago
    But 2021 Montana is significantly different to 2019 Montana. For just one change, the entrances to Yellowstone are closed. So there aren't even the same jobs available, think of all the tourist facing positions that aren't needed. Even if the employment rate was the same, you'd have to assume that the working population had changed along with the jobs available.
dv_dt 5y ago
3.8 is a fairly low unemployment rate overall though
- newacct583 5y ago
  Yes, but we don't cut people off of benefits because of "fairly low" unemployment. Were GOP governors itching to impoverish their own electorate in 2019? Why not? What changed? (I mean, we know what changed. Minority parties have vested interest in government failure, and now that partisanship is nationalized GOP governors are actually incentivized to hurt the people that elected them if there's a Democratic federal government.)
  - dv_dt 5y ago
    I didn't mean that as justification for cutting off benefits, it was unintended it if sounded that way. In fact I think Jerome Powell, Chair of the Fed has been quoted as saying he's not too worried about reports of employers complaining about hiring because he's looking at data on actual wages - and if the employers were participating in a labor market he would see increased wages as competition for labor.

numbsafari 5y ago

Per the parent, unemployment is not the same thing as workforce participation. If someone has decided to stop looking for work so that they can stay home and care for a sick family member, or take care of a child, then they are no longer counted towards the unemployment rate, even though overall workforce participation has declined.

newacct583 5y ago
No, that's the U-3 number which is intended to measure people actively seeking work. It's true there's a lot of subtlety with measuring and understanding unemployment statistics, but this argument is just spin, it doesn't hold. The simple truth is that workforce participation in Montana (and the rest of the US) is actually quite high right now, especially given the pandemic context. This policy is simply misguided, period. It targets the wrong people for the wrong things to solve a problem that doesn't exist. And it's actively harming the people who elected the government. All because the people making decisions choose to believe spin and not truths.
- after_care 5y ago
  You stated your viewpoint, and claimed that the other point of viewpoint is “spin”. However you haven’t made a compelling argument why the opposing viewpoint is spin and why yours is better.
  - alexilliamson 5y ago
    Nor did the parent cite and actual number for the "quite high" workforce participation rate.
- salawat 5y ago
  It does a pretty crappy jjob of acting as a proxy, as the only thing it does measure is people using state unemployment programs. Once you exhaust your benefit, or if you decide not to claim, you aren't counted. Some business models actually factor in usage of the unemployment system to provide continuity of workforce via keeping people solvent between rehires, further diluting the utility of the metric. After a certain age, there is a marked reluctance to hire on older workers that I've noticed, and far fewer older applicants in at least my field than I expected. It is not uncommon in so.e parts of the country for some people to be completely unaware that unemployment is even a thing they can avail themselves of, or if there is, there's so much stigma and saber rattling at "those damn fraudsters" that after you hear it enough you start to wonder whether you should really be collecting it at all. BLS - Better Lying with Statistics

dathinab 5y ago

Well if the people who lost their job do not have the right qualifications to work in the open positions, and are unlikely to get them you can have both (as it takes time (month, years) and often money (an unemployed person might not have)). Also if the jobs are so badly payed that it's going in the direction of it being better to not work even if there is no money for unemployed people you also can have a labor shortage. (Just an example, so physical taxing job which which also has a high chance of damaging your clothes and doesn't provide clothes for you can make you cost more money due to increased living cost (clothes, more food) then you might earn.) I'm not saying that any of this things are happening, just that you totally can have both high unemployment and a servere labor shortage , either due to qualifications or due to inhuman working conditions.

newacct583 5y ago
That's true when comparing workforces across demographics and economies, sure. Happens all the time. But here we're comparing "2019 Montana" with "2021 Montana" -- it's not like Montanans or their economy have changed that much. The clear hypothesis is that if the same people are doing the same jobs in the same economy with similar workforce participation numbers that there is no "severe" employment shortage".
- lazyasciiart 5y ago
  But 2021 Montana is significantly different to 2019 Montana. For just one change, the entrances to Yellowstone are closed. So there aren't even the same jobs available, think of all the tourist facing positions that aren't needed. Even if the employment rate was the same, you'd have to assume that the working population had changed along with the jobs available.

dv_dt 5y ago

3.8 is a fairly low unemployment rate overall though

newacct583 5y ago
Yes, but we don't cut people off of benefits because of "fairly low" unemployment. Were GOP governors itching to impoverish their own electorate in 2019? Why not? What changed? (I mean, we know what changed. Minority parties have vested interest in government failure, and now that partisanship is nationalized GOP governors are actually incentivized to hurt the people that elected them if there's a Democratic federal government.)
- dv_dt 5y ago
  I didn't mean that as justification for cutting off benefits, it was unintended it if sounded that way. In fact I think Jerome Powell, Chair of the Fed has been quoted as saying he's not too worried about reports of employers complaining about hiring because he's looking at data on actual wages - and if the employers were participating in a labor market he would see increased wages as competition for labor.