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There is no jobs problem in the US though. Unemployment is at 4% which is mostly just job churn. Long term unemployment is only 1%. US consumers, that’s all of

by simonh 2y ago

There is no jobs problem in the US though. Unemployment is at 4% which is mostly just job churn. Long term unemployment is only 1%. US consumers, that’s all of you, are being hammered with taxes on imported goods most of which can’t realistically be produced in the US anyway, to solve a problem you don’t have. A commitment like this takes years to plan. It can’t possibly be a response to tariffs announced weeks ago. This is all optics.

teaearlgraycold 2y ago
Depends how you count it. I wouldn’t count most gig app workers as employed. But the government does.
- slt2021 2y ago
  I also wouldnt count fake bullshit government/corp/college administration jobs (email jobs) with negative productivity
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    I just gotta pay rent dude. I'm not judging how you do it.
- astrange 2y ago
  The government determines the employment rate via surveys, i.e. they just go and ask people if they're employed. It's not a calculation from taxes or from employers or anything. So it's up to the gig workers if they think they're employed or not. Presumably this depends on how often they do it.
slt2021 2y ago
False, USA has a big problem with manufacturing. All US jobs are service jobs to prop up consumer economy, that have no strategic benefit. A lot of fake employment and low productivity jobs are in the government/NGO sector, paper pushers, DEI jobs, law/compliance type jobs - that should have been manufacturing jobs instead. USA has no shipyards and infrastructure is crumbling precisely because of misallocation of resources and labor
- astrange 2y ago
  > USA has no shipyards and infrastructure is crumbling precisely because of misallocation of resources and labor That's because of the Jones Act and other poorly designed protectionism.
  - redmajor12 2y ago
    How is the Jones Act responsible for the failure of domestic ship building? Seems like the Jones Act didn't go far enough if we really cared about a strong domestic ship building industry.
    - astrange 2y ago
      If it went even further the demand for ships would be even lower. You want to copy what South Korea did, which is basically the opposite approach.
- cyberax 2y ago
  DEI jobs and the _total_ NGOs employment are basically nothing in the overall employment. Less than 1%. Heck, the _whole_ Federal government workforce is less than 2% of the total workforce. > USA has no shipyards and infrastructure is crumbling precisely because of misallocation of resources and labor Yes, and you have tariffs to thank for this. The Jones Act requires US-built ships for any ship traffic within the US waters. So the shipbuilders were insulated from competition and just degraded into Defense contract moochers.
  - slt2021 2y ago
    if shipbuilders were not insulated from competition, they would have offshored their manufacturing long time ago and sold out to Hyundai or some other foreign conglomerate. (just like the rest of manufacturing left USA in 80s-90s) Jones Act is the reason US has at least some form of domestic shipbuilding
    - 2y ago
johnnyanmac 2y ago
Can you tell the tech industry and my temp office that, please? Job market still sucks in Los Angeles. And I don't trust unemployment in this gig economy. I'm technically not unemployed, but I haven't had a full time job in nearly 2 years.
- georgemcbay 2y ago
  I fully believe that the real ("main street not wall street") economy is in worse shape than government numbers on unemployment suggest and both sides are to blame for different aspects of this problem. But nothing Trump is doing is going to fix your situation. In fact he (or rather Elon/doge) is very actively making things worse for you with the massive government layoffs, flooding the market with even more people to compete with you for jobs making finding work more difficult and also eventually dropping all of our wages.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    >But nothing Trump is doing is going to fix your situation. I'm aware. I'm sure he's responsible for at least 3 job freezes I ran into mid-interview this year. He's literally costing me job opportunities because no one can budget around this chaotic government.
chrisco255 2y ago
4% too many and probably understated. The BLS repeatedly underestimated unemployment during the previous administration. Also the labor participation rate, which is harder to game, still hasn't reached pre-Covid levels yet: https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...
- throw0101d 2y ago
  > https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab... In February 2020 it was 63.3% and in January 2025 it was 62.6%, for a difference of 0.7%. Also note the steady decline post-2008 and the multi-year plateau that jitters around 63%. Having the plateau change from ~63% to ~62.5% isn't an unreasonable scenario. * https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
- astrange 2y ago
  > Also the labor participation rate, which is harder to game, still hasn't reached pre-Covid levels yet That's because Americans got /richer/ and retired. You want to look at the prime-age rate, which the boomers have moved out of.
- cyberax 2y ago
  The labor participation rate is going to be declining for the foreseable future because the population is aging. If you look at the prime-age employment rate, we're almost up to the record high levels: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU01300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU01300060
rcpt 2y ago
Right. One reason we're in this mess is that voters don't even notice unemployment but are extremely sensitive to inflation.

by simonh 2y ago

teaearlgraycold 2y ago

Depends how you count it. I wouldn’t count most gig app workers as employed. But the government does.

slt2021 2y ago
I also wouldnt count fake bullshit government/corp/college administration jobs (email jobs) with negative productivity
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  I just gotta pay rent dude. I'm not judging how you do it.
astrange 2y ago
The government determines the employment rate via surveys, i.e. they just go and ask people if they're employed. It's not a calculation from taxes or from employers or anything. So it's up to the gig workers if they think they're employed or not. Presumably this depends on how often they do it.

slt2021 2y ago

False, USA has a big problem with manufacturing. All US jobs are service jobs to prop up consumer economy, that have no strategic benefit. A lot of fake employment and low productivity jobs are in the government/NGO sector, paper pushers, DEI jobs, law/compliance type jobs - that should have been manufacturing jobs instead. USA has no shipyards and infrastructure is crumbling precisely because of misallocation of resources and labor

astrange 2y ago
> USA has no shipyards and infrastructure is crumbling precisely because of misallocation of resources and labor That's because of the Jones Act and other poorly designed protectionism.
- redmajor12 2y ago
  How is the Jones Act responsible for the failure of domestic ship building? Seems like the Jones Act didn't go far enough if we really cared about a strong domestic ship building industry.
  - astrange 2y ago
    If it went even further the demand for ships would be even lower. You want to copy what South Korea did, which is basically the opposite approach.
cyberax 2y ago
DEI jobs and the _total_ NGOs employment are basically nothing in the overall employment. Less than 1%. Heck, the _whole_ Federal government workforce is less than 2% of the total workforce. > USA has no shipyards and infrastructure is crumbling precisely because of misallocation of resources and labor Yes, and you have tariffs to thank for this. The Jones Act requires US-built ships for any ship traffic within the US waters. So the shipbuilders were insulated from competition and just degraded into Defense contract moochers.
- slt2021 2y ago
  if shipbuilders were not insulated from competition, they would have offshored their manufacturing long time ago and sold out to Hyundai or some other foreign conglomerate. (just like the rest of manufacturing left USA in 80s-90s) Jones Act is the reason US has at least some form of domestic shipbuilding
  - 2y ago

johnnyanmac 2y ago

Can you tell the tech industry and my temp office that, please? Job market still sucks in Los Angeles. And I don't trust unemployment in this gig economy. I'm technically not unemployed, but I haven't had a full time job in nearly 2 years.

georgemcbay 2y ago
I fully believe that the real ("main street not wall street") economy is in worse shape than government numbers on unemployment suggest and both sides are to blame for different aspects of this problem. But nothing Trump is doing is going to fix your situation. In fact he (or rather Elon/doge) is very actively making things worse for you with the massive government layoffs, flooding the market with even more people to compete with you for jobs making finding work more difficult and also eventually dropping all of our wages.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  >But nothing Trump is doing is going to fix your situation. I'm aware. I'm sure he's responsible for at least 3 job freezes I ran into mid-interview this year. He's literally costing me job opportunities because no one can budget around this chaotic government.

chrisco255 2y ago

4% too many and probably understated. The BLS repeatedly underestimated unemployment during the previous administration. Also the labor participation rate, which is harder to game, still hasn't reached pre-Covid levels yet: https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...

throw0101d 2y ago
> https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab... In February 2020 it was 63.3% and in January 2025 it was 62.6%, for a difference of 0.7%. Also note the steady decline post-2008 and the multi-year plateau that jitters around 63%. Having the plateau change from ~63% to ~62.5% isn't an unreasonable scenario. * https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
astrange 2y ago
> Also the labor participation rate, which is harder to game, still hasn't reached pre-Covid levels yet That's because Americans got /richer/ and retired. You want to look at the prime-age rate, which the boomers have moved out of.
cyberax 2y ago
The labor participation rate is going to be declining for the foreseable future because the population is aging. If you look at the prime-age employment rate, we're almost up to the record high levels: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU01300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU01300060

rcpt 2y ago

Right. One reason we're in this mess is that voters don't even notice unemployment but are extremely sensitive to inflation.