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The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment

349 points by mudil 12y ago

smackfu 12y ago
Boy, a polling org putting up political opinion pieces sure seems like a terrible idea.
- greenjellybean 12y ago
  I agree, gotta get those views though right?
- zurn91 12y ago
  Seems like a pretty damning article to everyone currently in a position of power, not one political side or the other.
  - fixermark 12y ago
    Only depending on how one evaluates the non-factually-substantiated assertions in the opinion piece.
- muglug 12y ago
  It seems like it's equally about promoting one of Gallup's products, the "good job" metric they link to. I don't see anything partisan in the piece, simply because the same unemployment metric has been used by both Republicans and Democrats to further their goals.
  - smackfu 12y ago
    Here's a piece from a conservative think tank that is essentially the same argument as what is in the "non-partisan" Gallup opinion poll: https://www.aei.org/publication/tracking-the-unreported-15-6-unemployed/ https://www.aei.org/publication/tracking-the-unreported-15-6... It's been a pretty common talking point.
- jsnk 12y ago
  I don't see anything wrong with presenting facts unless they are wrong. These facts don't look good on media outlets and Obama, but facts are facts. What I want to know is if these facts are true.
  - fixermark 12y ago
    This is an opinion piece though; there are facts (in the "lies, damn lies, and statistics" category) that state summary information about the world, and this author interprets those facts in a particular fashion. There's not a lot of truth value one can assign to a statement like "A good job is an individual's primary identity, their very self-worth, their dignity -- it establishes the relationship they have with their friends, community and country." Well, I suppose one could if one were, say, Gallup and could poll on the question of how many people agree with that statement. But I'm unaware of such a poll at this time. ;)
- jobu 12y ago
  It seems more an opinion piece about the unemployment metric than about the politics. Granted, the White House is mentioned, but more for framing than any political slant.
- andrewmutz 12y ago
  Yeah, it's probably the CEO promoting his own book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_Jobs_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_Jobs_War
  - smackfu 12y ago
    Aha, he has a book. Is he running for office soon?
- astazangasta 12y ago
  Do you are think people who run polling organizations don't have political views? How about Pew? Yahoo? Even the AP? They all do. Why not speak from them? If it doesn't compromise their survey methodology, what's the problem? If you don't know, Gallup was founded on an extremely ideological position: that public opinion matters, and politicians should seek to understand what it is as a guide, and we need tools and organizations devoted to studying it. It seems natural they would advocate for a better informed public.
  - smackfu 12y ago
    I think that if the CEO of a polling company were to come out and endorse a candidate, I would have a really hard time trusting their polls on that race.
brohee 12y ago
That's why the number of people 18-70 employed full time would be a much more interesting number. No removing of prisoners, people on disability, housewifes, people that worked just one paid hour this week... The picture painted by that number would be bleak in most of the developing word, that's why it's not readily published.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  The BLS publishes pretty comprehensive statistics for the US: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm They still have some of the caveats that you mention, but not as many (and many of the reports are for some purpose where the caveat is sensible). For instance, this table breaks down full and part time employment: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t08.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t08.htm
- nmcfarl 12y ago
  The problem here is that it wouldn't necessarily be bleak. Housewives by choice, college kids and those just retired at 35 (or 65) are good things - these people are doing what they most want to do with their lives, and are having all their needs met without a job. However, as we haven't been collecting this data for the last hundred years we don't know what's normal for this number. And we don't know what percentage of the population are these "good unemployed" and what percentage of people are the traditional (bad) unemployed, so our guesses suck as well. I think this number should be released, but I don't think it will do much good for the first decade or 2. -- Addendum- after seeing maxericson's comment, I was reminded that I should not comment on things I don't know in depth. And it does seem like the U.S. does report the number of employed, it's just not what the press tracks. However, oddly, the numbers he links to seem to mainly be predicated on the same definition of unemployment, and do not seem to dive deeply into the category of "neither employed nor unemployed." Anyhow I'll leave my comment for the time being.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    I expect the other tables there contain the information to get some answer to your "neither employed nor unemployed", several of them analyze the workforce. For instance: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm I don't think I'm very informed on this topic, I just happen to know the BLS is tracking a lot more than gets reported in the news.
msoad 12y ago
All these facts were true when unemployment rate was higher. So even if the numbers are off by some offset they improved.
- tomp 12y ago
  It makes sense that the rate decreases - people give up hope and stop looking for jobs, or get shitty 3hrs/week jobs, and thus drop out of official statistics, without any actual improvement.
  - mikecb 12y ago
    Here's U6, which takes into account these groups: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/U6RATE http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/U6RATE
  - Touche 12y ago
    Presumably "giving up hope" would be evenly distributed, not all at once as to cause the rate to drop significantly.
  - Varcht 12y ago
    Not only that but if they run out of benefits looking for a job they lose their eligibility to be "unemployed".
- ColinDabritz 12y ago
  Except that we don't track those numbers, so it could be that earlier in the recession more people were recently out of work, and looking hard, meaning they were counted in this number. Right now, it's been a lot longer, so perhaps many of them have given up, even if they need jobs, so they are no longer being counted. The number of people needing jobs, regardless of searching might have gone down similarly to the reported number, or it might have stayed exactly the same overall. Without the information, we don't know. I certainly know a few people who need jobs and can't get them, and some of them aren't being counted. Maybe it would be good to find out.
  - 12y ago
me2i81 12y ago
The BLS puts out 6 different unemployment statistics for every period. U3 is the "official rate", but you can also look at the other ones, including U4 = U3 + "discouraged workers", U5 = U4 + "marginally attached" workers, U6 = U5 + part time workers who would like to be full time. You can make arguments about which measurement is "right", but putting out an editorial implying that there is sleight-of-hand going on is silly--all the measurements are available, and comparing a single one to itself over time as a "headline rate" is completely reasonable.
- MayanAstronaut 12y ago
  Very true, every stat has issues. Take payroll of population that this CEO thinks is a better metric. It totally ignores demographics of a aging population. Baby-boomers are retiring, how a metric based CEO ignores this shows were the real bias is.
  - shubb 12y ago
    Uh, this metric is nuts, because it views anything that isn't 9-5 on a payroll as 'not a real job'. That ignores everything from independent contractors to seasonal work. These are huge components of the economy and always have been. So what does a movement in the metric even mean? Does it mean that people are working less, or does it mean that more people are self employed? Or students longer? I think wages are a more insightful way of estimating labor supply and demand. It's not great news: "U.S. real (inflation adjusted) median household income was $51,939 in 2013 versus $51,759 in 2012, statistically unchanged. The 2011 level was $51,842 and the 2010 level was $52,646. In 2013, real median household income was 8.0% lower than the 2007 pre-recession level of $56,436.[1]" (wikipediarite)
- saosebastiao 12y ago
  But if that U3 metric doesn't describe what normal people feel (the sort of people that don't know the difference between U3 and U6), then there is an argument for calling its "official" designation a sleight of hand. The U6 metric counts underemployment as unemployment. This reflects the common sentiment in the media, and it obviously shows a lack of recovery where other metrics have fully recovered by now.
PythonicAlpha 12y ago
Same as in Germany: Every government invents new possibilities to "count people out" of the official statistics. So the numbers fall, but unemployment stays the same or even rises.
scottkduncan 12y ago
"Gallup defines a good job as 30+ hours per week for an organization that provides a regular paycheck." Perhaps this definition hasn't caught up with the increase in freelancing and self-employment. Underemployment, particularly among lower skilled workers, surely is an issue in the U.S. but Gallup's approach could be undercounting some newer types of "good" jobs.
- unreal37 12y ago
  Yeah, agreed, that's a terrible definition of a good job. 1) Many people live off investments, pensions and passive income 2) Many people have income that is not regular or predictable, but large 3) Many people have good paying jobs that don't require 30 hours per week That's a very narrow definition. That's why they are only asking for a target of 50% I guess.
alyandon 12y ago
The various unemployment rates are pretty clearly defined and U3 is arguably not the most meaningful one to use but it is considered the "official" rate. More information here: http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate.jsp http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate.jsp
nostromo 12y ago
Take a look at this chart: http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/charts/employment/workforce-changes.html?LFPR-25-54-since-1990.gif http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/charts/employment/... I fear that 1999 was "peak labor" -- the point at which technology started to destroy more jobs than it created. We HN types live in a bubble in which times couldn't be better -- but in the larger economy there are fewer jobs paying and they're paying lower wages. It's troubling.
- jryan49 12y ago
  That graph is pretty misleading being only from 80% to 85%. Also it's only over a period of <20 years.
- clavalle 12y ago
  'fear'? That's an odd response to our most precious resource, human minds, being freed from time sucking drudgery. We've created the economic systems. They are not the Laws of the Universe. We can change them if they become a problem
  - nostromo 12y ago
    I'm with you. Long term, this is good news. If we had basic income I'd be cheerful rather than worried. But we're not there yet, and you can't tell someone that is unemployed and can't find work that they should be happy to be free of the time sucking drudgery of employment. That's clearly a "let them eat cake" response.
    - abstractbill 12y ago
      I agree with (both of) you. How might I contribute to making Basic Income happen? I've been seeing more and more people talk seriously about it, which seems like a great sign, but perhaps not enough to change anything. Are there any advocacy efforts I could donate to?
      - maerF0x0 12y ago
zkhalique 12y ago
Deficit is dropping like a stone, but republicans aren't looking to bring back government jobs, they are just looking to use the flavor of the day to make people afraid of the Obama administration.
- mod 12y ago
  Smaller government has been a part of the Republican platform since long before Obama.
  - zkhalique 12y ago
    It's part of the Republican platform when a Democrat president is in office, but it seems Republican presidents don't get the message. Deficits rose under every Republican president and dropped under every Democratic president, since the 1950s. But republicans always act as if it's the other way around. Bush's administration for example financed: medicare overhaul, no child left behind, two wars overseas, and bank bailouts. The way they did the spending had little oversight and the results were mediocre, or negative. Under Obama's admin at least there was "recovery.org - track the money" and more accountability. If republicans really want to cut government spending and deficits they should look into cutting the military budget. Not only does has it ballooned to take up nearly half of all non discretionary income, but apparently $7 TRILLION is unaccounted for. So until they do that, I don't consider their "platform" anything but a talking point to bring up ONLY against Democratic presidents. (In some way, it's good because it keeps them in check, but then republican presidents get a free ride from them.) http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/want-cut-government-waste-8-5-trillion-pentagon-142321339.html http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/want-cut-governm...
med00d 12y ago
The standard rate (U3) doesn't take underemployed or those who give up looking for work into account, but the U6 rate does. The U6 rate in January of 2009 was 14.2% and it is now down to 11.2% from its peak at 17.1% at the end of 2009/early 2010. Is the economy still struggling? Sure. Is unemployment headed in the right direction? Absolutely. Edit: One thing that people commonly like to do is compare the U6 rate to the U3 rates of the past. "Unemployment isn't 5.6%, it's really closer to 12% ..." That's foolish because it's an apples to oranges comparison. Yes 11.2% is high unemployment, but what we judge as the low/satisfactory unemployment rate would come in somewhere around 7-7.5% when looking at the U6 rate -vs- the 4-4.5% that's considered low/satisfactory using the U3 rate. Source: http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp "The U6 unemployment rate counts not only people without work seeking full-time employment (the more familiar U-3 rate), but also counts "marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons." Note that some of these part-time workers counted as employed by U-3 could be working as little as an hour a week. And the "marginally attached workers" include those who have gotten discouraged and stopped looking, but still want to work. The age considered for this calculation is 16 years and over."
- enraged_camel 12y ago
  >>The standard rate (U3) doesn't take underemployed or those who give up looking for work into account, but the U6 rate does. The U6 rate in January of 2009 was 14.2% and it is now down to 11.2% from its peak at 17.1% at the end of 2009/early 2010. Is the economy still struggling? Sure. Is unemployment headed in the right direction? Absolutely. But the decrease in unemployment and underemployment still don't paint the most accurate picture, because a lot of people who became employed did so at lower pay. I mean you may be employed full-time but if you're making 25% less than what you did before the crash, it's difficult to make the case that things are improving.
  - med00d 12y ago
    Can you share any information about people taking the same job for less pay? I haven't seen evidence of this, but I don't doubt that it's happening in some places. I'll admit that I live in sort of a bubble because my salary has doubled since 2008 and the salaries of many of my friends and family have grown quite a bit as well. Granted, most of the people I know work in some sort of tech-related field.
clarkmoody 12y ago
Whether or not this information is always available each time BLS publishes the statistics is not the issue here. The potentially alarming angle is whether the drop in unemployment is attributed to people finding jobs or to people leaving the workforce. The current reporting of unemployment numbers certainly leaves room for spin, depending on how you want to package the news.
- clavalle 12y ago
  Only for people who don't know how to look up the data for themselves.
jobu 12y ago
Some people would argue that Social Security Disability Insurance is soaking up a huge number of people that would rather be working as well: http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ "But, in most cases, going on disability means you will not work, you will not get a raise, you will not get whatever meaning people get from work. Going on disability means, assuming you rely only on those disability payments, you will be poor for the rest of your life. That's the deal. And it's a deal 14 million Americans have signed up for."
declan 12y ago
This is well-known, I think, in economic circles. If you want another, arguably more accurate measure based on the government's previous (pre-1995) methodology, check out Shadowstats.com: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chart... It shows the real unemployment rate, counting short-term discouraged and marginally attached workers, to be around 22-23% today. That's up from around 12-13% before the 2008 recession.
- blisterpeanuts 12y ago
  Wow, that's a lot. But it could be right. There are a lot of people out there who are under employed, living on spouse's income, working under the table (hence under the radar), etc. I'd like to conduct an experiment in special economic zones as was done in China and other developing areas in the recent past. Designate some place (my choice would be an impoverished inner city ghetto area) as an SEZ, and make it: no corporate taxes, no income taxes; no municipal, county, or state taxes; no unions; and minimal regulations - e.g., waive EPA environmental impact studies, waive minimum wage (down to some minimal amount like $4/hour). Guarantee these conditions for the next 10 years. I suspect you'd see factories, plants, and offices flock to such a zone, and there'd be a mad scramble for real estate. Ancillary services would also boom--taxi, food, construction, office supplies, delivery and courier services, etc. I doubt it would ever happen given the number of laws and rules you'd have to waive, but it would be an interesting experiment in cutting through the red tape and getting back to basics.
- saalweachter 12y ago
  Just out of curiosity, do you know where he gets his statistic for long-term discouraged workers (he defines his measure of unemployment as 'U6 + long-term discouraged workers'; U6 only includes short-term discouraged workers, who looked for work in the last year but not in the last month.)? The closest analogue I can find is the labor force participation rate, which has dropped steadily by a total of 3% since 2008[1]; this number doesn't seem to square with his chart, however, so I'm curious if you know his underlying data source. [1] http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
tjradcliffe 12y ago
I'm not sure why this is being reported as new or interesting. "They don't count people who have stopped looking for work" has been reported to death for decades (always, year after year, decade after decade, as if no one had ever pointed this out before... it's one of those strange "perpetually surprising" stories, like "engineers look to nature for inspiration".) What is new and interesting is that in the past six years the American labour participation rate--the fraction of the working-age-adult population that is either employed or looking for work--has plummeted from 66% to 63%: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 To get a sense of what a big deal this is, you can re-run that chart to cover the full range of data from 1948-2014. After being flat at about 59% for two decades, the LPR begins to ramp up in the late 60's as Boomer women entered the workforce. It exhibits a broad flat peak from 1990 to 2008 at about the 66-67% level, and then starts its dramatic decline in sync with the financial crisis, and is now back at a level not seen since 1978. This is a demographic shift of enormous proportions, and the answer to "Why" is not known: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/06/the-incredible-shrinking-labor-force-again http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/06/t... There is a fairly desperate attempt to spin this as "Boomers retiring" but that runs into a problem of simple arithmetic: the population of the United States was 203 million in 1970, when the ramp-up in the LPR began. It is now 320 million, a factor of 1.5 higher. So for every Boomer retiring, there should be 1.5 new workers entering the workforce. Where are they?
- acscott 12y ago
  Agreed. They taught this in high school economics class--a public high school economics class. I think the article is playing into the political rhetoric. For a politician to use the Unemployment Rate as a benchmark is fine as a delta since all the U values seem to track each other if this chart is accurate: http://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate http://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate 3% of what? I would not characterize that as plummeting, but after looking at the graph you linked to, it very much looks like a "plummet". It doesn't sound like they have a definitive answer of the cause. The data is done by survey, and missed surveys are "imputed". (ftp://ftp2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/techdocs/cpsmar14.pdf) So I strongly suspect (but cannot support) there's probably some kind of assumption of a gaussian somewhere, and of course human behavior can assume many different "forms". In other words, I think they should be providing an error rate with these numbers. The other aspect is they probably have faith in the Gaussian I suspect.
deleted 12y ago
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pbreit 12y ago
Right-leaning Gallup of course "forgets" to note that baby boomers retiring is making a material contribution.
joelhaus 12y ago
The delta is the most relatable conclusion the average person can draw from the unemployment rate reports. Otherwise, without taking some economics classes, you're doomed to misinterpret.
pbreit 12y ago
Right-leaning Gallup of course "forgets" to note that baby boomers retiring is making a material contribution. Also that the recession gave employers a good opportunity to automate workers out.
rilita 12y ago
"many Americans... don't know... Few Americans know this" "wondering what hollowed out the middle class" Perhaps the clueless people who don't know anything about what things mean ( the people this article is targeted at ) are the same people who are unemployed/under-employed ( notably also the group this is targeted at ) Summary of tfa: "The number news refers to as unemployment does not mean what you thought it means; it means X" Great, now how does this tell us anything we couldn't learn by looking up "unemployment rate" on wikipedia?
- lutorm 12y ago
  now how does this tell us anything we couldn't learn by looking up "xxx" on wikipedia? That applies to many things written. Not sure why you're singling this out. If every blog post written had to include original research, there wouldn't be much writing going on...
  - rilita 12y ago
    This is hacker news, I expect that things posted here are noteworthy to people who know what they are doing and can research stuff they are interested in for themselves. Posts of the type "Did you know that the tooth fairy isn't real" are a waste of time to the professionals who read hacker news. Also, anything I spend my time reading through expecting something unique / new and find nothing I respond this way.
seizethecheese 12y ago
Economics student here. One reason Economists are interested in Unemployment is because when it reaches a certain level it puts pressure on prices through upwards wage pressure (fewer people looking for work means employers need to pay more.) Defining Unemployment narrowly as only those actively looking for work and recently unemployed provides for a statistic best measures the labor market's functioning. As others have noted, there are many other statistics that are collected which can elucidate social concerns.
- mikecb 12y ago
  NAIRU is hypothesized for some inflationary effects, but it's not well understood. Still, nice mention.
- nostromo 12y ago
  That shows problem with the official number though. If unemployment is down, wages should be up. But wages are down. That implies the unemployment rate is not accurately reflecting the true supply of labor. Or, it shows what I believe: demand for labor is decreasing even as the economy grows.
  - intopieces 12y ago
    >Or, it shows what I believe: demand for labor is decreasing even as the economy grows. I hope this is the case. Automation should be putting a great deal of workers out of the labor force. The question is how can we deal with it: through workforce education and skill retooling? Through social assistance programs? It will likely be the question of our generation.
    - dtlawhon 12y ago
      Skill retooling would help to an extent, but one programmer today can do more work than 10 programmers could do 15 years ago, or maybe even 10 years ago. That trend isn't going away. Look at Django. If you include the hundreds of open-source modules with everything from messaging to billing to social media already coded, you can string together web apps in an hour that would take whole teams months and months from scratch. Within the next decade or two I'd estimate that programming will hit its peak employment and start to decline as more and more work is automated.
danans 12y ago
Some of the hypothetical examples of out-of-work people the author uses are pretty unlikely, and seem intended to cast an artificially wide net for his argument: i.e. engineers and health-care workers and math degree holders probably have lower than average unemployment rates, yet the author paints a picture of them mowing lawns and losing unemployment (i'm not saying it doesn't happen, just that it's unlikely). In a way, the author is committing the same sin as those he criticizes: he also oversimplifies the employment situation. The unemployment rate and the labor force participation rate vary dramatically by region and by profession (in California alone, compare the Bay Area to the Imperial Valley). It's much better for some highly skilled individuals, especially in booming metros, and much worse for others, who are in either low skilled, or in regions experiencing secular decline. Also, Gallup's own underemployment numbers (cited in the article) show both the unemployment rate and the underemployment rate at 7.1% and 15.9%, which is lower than where they were in Feb 2010, and that it is almost certainly lower than what they were in the depths of the great recession. Nobody would argue that these stats aren't as good as they should be, but to say that things haven't improved at all is very disingenuous, which is why this reads more like political anger-rousing article than a well-reasoned op/ed. The latter isn't surprising considering that the first rumbles of the next presidential election cycle are here. EDIT:wording
yason 12y ago
This is how it's in Europe as well: unemployment rates can be redefined to include or exclude certain people depending on what are the desired results. I usually look at employment rates instead which comes with its own peculiarities.
- hnnewguy 12y ago
  >unemployment rates can be redefined to include or exclude certain people depending on what are the desired results The metrics aren't redefined, nor are there "desired results". There are a variety of unemployment measures at the BLS, and the information on how each are calculated is freely available. Why assume conspiracy?
Animats 12y ago
Realistic numbers for unemployment and other economic statistics are available at "http://www.shadowstats.com" http://www.shadowstats.com". These are mostly computed from older Government definitions. Over the years, the way some key numbers are computed have been changed to make them look better. Shadowstats uses the old computation methods, which are more honest. It's a paid service ($175 a year) for people and businesses who need better numbers. Their unemployment rate, currently at 23%, includes long-term discouraged workers, which the BLS stopped counting in 1994. Their inflation value is based on the way inflation was computed before 1980. It includes house prices. Their value is currently 8%. This compares to the official number of 2%. Shadowstats has it right - increasing real estate prices are inflation.
- evanpw 12y ago
  Here is the opposing view: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/17/the-intellectual-cesspool-of-the-inflation-truthers/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/17/t....
- mikeyouse 12y ago
  Shadowstats is the dumbest thing I've ever read. If they have it right on inflation, the US has been in a recession since 1988. If they have it right re: house prices, houses are worth 60% less than they were in 1980 and we never had a housing bubble. One important note, Williams from Shadowstats definitely doesn't use 'the old computation methods' -- he just arbitrarily adds a 'factor' to the CPI rate and claims that's the real number. The BLS has published volumes about the idiocy of the assumptions behind Shadowstats. As have many economists from all over the spectrum. Literally nobody worth listening to takes them seriously. Why would banks willingly offer 30-year fixed mortgages at 3.6% if inflation was 8%/year? From the right-leaning AEI: http://www.aei.org/publication/why-amity-shlaes-is-dead-wrong-about-inflation/ http://www.aei.org/publication/why-amity-shlaes-is-dead-wron... Think for a moment what that means for real GDP growth the past three decades. Nominal GDP averaged about 5% from 1986 through 2013. Of that 5%, 2% was inflation and 3% was real GDP growth. If inflation was really 5% — and often, according to Williams, it was much, much higher — then there has been no real economic growth in America all that time. Actually, we have probably been in a long depression from the Reagan years forward. Or from the left-leaning John Aziz: http://azizonomics.com/2013/06/01/the-trouble-with-shadowstats/ http://azizonomics.com/2013/06/01/the-trouble-with-shadowsta... But Shadowstats is not calculating inflation any differently. They are not using the 1980s or 1990s methodology that they believe would be higher. All Shadowstats is doing is taking the CPI data and adding on an arbitrary constant to make it look like inflation is higher!
jpetersonmn 12y ago
I personally don't know anyone that doesn't already understand the things this article is pointing out.
goorpyguy 12y ago
I've been thinking for a while that there need to be incentives put in place for companies who short-change their their employees (and by extension, the public as a whole) by hiring 3 part-time workers instead of one full-time. This goes towards the "good job" / "American Dream" aspect of the article. People shouldn't have to work 2 or 3 part-time jobs to make a living if they don't want to, just because those are the jobs available. If somebody wants full-time employment (for which they are otherwise qualified), it would be better for them to have that. Of course, it is cheaper for the corporations to use part-time, because it keeps them flexible with scheduling/substitutes and due to added costs like benefits etc. I have been trying to figure out whether it makes sense to offer tax incentives/penalties which would push the balance towards more full-time jobs instead of part-time. One piece I have envisioned is forcing employers to offer the benefits a full-time employee would receive prorated to part-timers, with a penalty added for splitting it up. Make them want to offer a full-time job instead. The part I am worried about is whether the effect is too strong and prevents somebody who actually only wants part-time work from finding employment (e.g.: a student, full-time parent, senior citizen or handicapped person). There needs to be some part-time work available, but generally a member of the workforce probably wants a full-time job.
- brc 12y ago
  The issue is already the amount of regulations that attach to a full time worker. Adding more will only generate adverse affects. Using words like 'forcing' and 'penalising' will work in the opposite direction to what you might hope. You already identify the issue - full time workers require benefits and the like. For many small organisations, these make the cost of a full time worker prohibitive, so they fill in with multiple part time instead. The employer is incentivised to keep people part time.
- blisterpeanuts 12y ago
  You're proposing negative incentives, which may have the unintended consequence of eliminating both full-time and part time positions as companies opt to cut costs and outsource to overseas service providers. The danger is real. There are very few activities which can't be done remotely today, other than... massage, food service, medical (but even then some can be outsourced, e.g. radiology). I would prefer to see positive incentives, e.g. a tax break for every full time job that is filled domestically. Give them a financial reason to hire full timers, and they'll hire full timers. Punish them for hiring part timers, and they'll just move overseas, and then another few million people will be permanently unemployed or under employed.
stalcottsmith 12y ago
The author is not a dummy. He is CEO of a top tier polling organization. Surely he understands U3 and U6, etc. He may have partisan leanings to the extent that this can be taken as a criticism of the current administration. Current policies may not be helping but I'm not sure that any partisan solutions provide the answers needed. The bigger picture here is that the US sacrificed some broad-based increase in prosperity over the last 20+ years while helping the developing world to climb out of true poverty. You cannot bring 1 billion Chinese (and to a lesser extent other peoples) into the "middle class" through trade while at the same time sustaining the exceptionally high standard of living of so many Americans -- at least not without some major, hopefully-temporary dislocations. At the same time, somewhat related to this, we are witnessing the passing of a period in which America enjoyed unique competitive advantages which are unlikely to re-occur in a similar form. No amount of IT innovation can make up for the passing of peak-US-cheap-oil-production (1970s), or the loss or diminishing of the dollar's reserve status and the US's central role in global trade (ongoing), or the temporary advantage of economic competitors being crushed in WWII (50's and 60's)... The Americans worst affected by these policies were bought off to some extent with cheap imported consumer goods (think Walmart), oodles of credit, the spread of two income households and of course benefit programs. Now, if you were to try to address this problem sincerely from a position that jobs and employment are desirable social goods you wish to maximize, you might aim for sensible policies that would reduce the cost of living for typical Americans (allowing them to attain desirable, economically justifiable employment at globally competitive wages), increase labor mobility (ability to move for opportunity), and reduce the barriers to employment at the bottom of the employment ladder. Secondary policy objectives might include simplifying the tax system, encouraging household formation, and restructuring education so that expensive college degrees are less necessary. A lot of this has to do with how people are living in what kind of housing, how that housing is financed and what kind of transport they use to get to work and what kind of shape they are in mentally, physically and perhaps even spiritually to be be productive. I think major changes are needed to achieve broad-based 21st century prosperity growth in the US. Some of these changes would be deeply unpalatable and will only be considered if economic conditions worsen substantially. Some here seem to think we are entering a post-employment society where jobs will be increasingly scarce because they are not needed and that this is a good thing. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. This kind of thing is the hallmark of privileged bubble thinking. If you really remove the dignity of work from so many, you run the risk of making the people themselves seem redundant.
jordache 12y ago
it's funny that some right winger would link this ridiculous article here, thinking it would fool the HN collective.
pkaye 12y ago
I was once trying to compare US unemployment to other countries but was not sure which "U" statistic is closest to how others measure unemployment. Anyone has an idea for example within the EU?
- hudibras 12y ago
  U3 http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=36324 http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=36324 One of the reasons the U3 definition won't be changed (or alternately, why the other U rates were created) is that it's harmonized with the other OECD countries' rates. So, say, a 6% unemployment rate means the same thing in the U.S., Germany, Japan, Greece, etc.
yohann305 12y ago
It is far from being perfect metrics, I agree. However, it is a good way to compare unemployment fluctuation over time as long as we keep the same paramaters over time.
marquis 12y ago
This American Life has an excellent exposé on this topic, from 2013: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/transcript http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/t...
chipuni 12y ago
I look at Gallup's web page about U.S. employment (http://www.gallup.com/poll/125639/Gallup-Daily-Workforce.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/125639/Gallup-Daily-Workforce.asp...), and I have a question: The sum of their "% Payroll to population", "% Underemployed", and "% Unemployed" appears to be about 70%. If they're disjoint categories, what is the other 30%?
samspot 12y ago
> None of them will tell you this: If you, a family member or anyone is unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a job -- if you are so hopelessly out of work that you've stopped looking over the past four weeks -- the Department of Labor doesn't count you as unemployed Even the local news gives this disclaimer almost every time they mention the unemployment rate. Maybe it's not that nobody tells you, but that the author just didn't notice it.
franciscop 12y ago
If we counted Spanish unemployment like that it would surely not be the same rate as it is today, 23.7%. This definitely includes people that has given up hope about finding a job. On the other hand, it doesn't include those who are working without a legal contract, which I am sure would lower the percentage significantly since it's not uncommon.
neves 12y ago
I always thought that the great lie in the employment statistics was due to high percentage of the American population that is in jail. USA has the greatest number of prisoners of the developed countries, and it skews the statistics.
- jpatokal 12y ago
  Sure, but the total prison population has been static to falling since 2008 or so. This means it's increasing the labor pool, not shrinking it. http://amsaltz.com/tag/achievement-gap/ http://amsaltz.com/tag/achievement-gap/
- ptaipale 12y ago
  It cannot be a very great lie, because the incarceration rate is <1 %, and unemployment is generally an order of magnitude larger. And: incarceration rate includes also people who are not in in the potential workforce (i.e. are not working age).
debrice 12y ago
If you're getting unemployment benefit but do some undeclared job, you are employed but count as unemployed. If you're not looking for a job, it's fair to not be counted as unemployed. Otherwise you can also count any kid in age of working in the statistics or family who have decided to have one member employed and the other taking care of the family. The writer (CEO of gallup) pretty much explains that the stats behind the title is not what HE thinks it is. This statistic describes those who want to work and cannot find a job.
ThomPete 12y ago
I must say I am chocked at how many people seem to defend the U3 definition vs. U6 As far as can tell the number of actual fulltime jobs is decreasing and the number of jobs that aren't providing full time income is increasing. Unless you have a political agenda why would you insist that U3 is better than U6?
- mikeyouse 12y ago
  Because it's directly comparable with the rest of the worked and is the measure we've used historically - both of which have value. If others decide U6 is the most important figure, it's reported in literally the same publication as the U3 figure and they can reference it accordingly.
  - ThomPete 12y ago
    The US and the EU measures unemployement differently. Also U3 is hiding things U6 aren't.
bibabo 12y ago
Most interesting is this: Many people compare other countries unemployment to US U3 not US U6/U5 while countries with gov. unemployement benefits (unemployed are people who get money, which includes people not looking or with a small amount of income) have numbers more in tune with U6/U5 and should be compared to U6/U5. This makes the US economy always looks nicer. (Same for GDP with chained dollars btw.)
dredmorbius 12y ago
Workforce participation, median, minimum, and bottom decile wage are in many ways vastly more informative than unemployment numbers. Yes, even the expanded U6 values BLS provides. Participation tells you how many people are working. Minimum wage tells you how well the worst-paid fare (and as Adam Smith notes in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, "A man must always live by his work" -- which he expands to mean: wages must provide not only for the laborer, but for a spouse, children, and the education of those children to provide for the next generation of workers. Median wage tells you where the typical worker is. It's not skewed upwards by a few highly-compensated individuals as mean would be. If you and I are at a bar and Bill Gates walks in, the mean wealth has just jumped tremendously, the median not so much. Bottom decile tells you how those at the bottom rung of the compensation ladder, though not necessarily at minimum wage, are doing. Smith has a considerable amount to say on this as well. The biggest problem with unemployment (and other economic / econometric metrics) is that once defined they become political, and an change to more meaningful statistics tends to make the administration in power look worse.
tezza 12y ago
Others have mentioned U6 etc. The issue of the headline figure not capturing certain key features is mentioned as nauseum on CNBC a or any decent financial news source. Gallup and the person who posted this is trying to make it sound like a revelation. Further almost all types of employment has improved. Here in the UK we have a similar obfuscation technique where the opposition says more women are out of work than ever, whereas the government says more women are in work than ever. Both are true, but behind the scenes it is because there is the largest population of work aged women ever.
bayesianhorse 12y ago
Touting these unemployment numbers as a "big lie" is equally misleading. Especially when comparing this number to a past situation of which we don't know the disappointing details. Just saying "only 44% of adults have a good job" doesn't sound like a good number either. This doesn't seem to count mothers, "house wifes" (if they choose that occupation voluntarily and gladly), college students and probably not even grad students.
- unreal37 12y ago
  Doesn't include retired people, investors, the rich, people with an irregular but high income, actors, singers, contract consultants, people taking a long vacation or sabbatical, people who own a business in the early stage, y-combinator companies...
kwhitefoot 12y ago
On the subject of Basic Income. I think most people are missing some very important points by concentrating so hard on the costs, that is, the money provided to the recipients of the Basic Income. - Poor people spend pretty much everything they get and they do so locally, so a very large proportion of the BI will be immediately spent in the local economy thus increasing the opportunities for people to provide goods and services. - Having an income that will prevent you starving to death or having your house or car repossessed means that you have the opportunity to turn down a poorly paid or dangerous job. This will go some way to rectifying the imbalance of power between employees and employers and drive up wages at the bottom end - BI is not charity and is generally not intended to be means tested; every citizen gets it rich and poor alike. It is income and taxable in the normal way.
dkrich 12y ago
This article reads like a transcript of a drunk guy at a bar explaining his political point of view. Lots of stated assumptions about what other people don't know, backed up with zero facts to substantiate any claims made therein. He claims repeatedly that "most people don't know [some fact about what goes into calculating the unemployment rate]." I think actually most people who read the news do, in fact, know that people who have been chronically out of work and given up looking are not counted among the unemployed. How could they not? It was hammered home over and over in the midst of the recession. He never provides any numbers to support the claim that a large percentage of people fall into that category. He just states that it's left out of the calculation, that few people know it, and then leaves you to assume that therefore this must be a significant percentage of the population. Stupid article.
ptaipale 12y ago
It's interesting that so often everyone talks about how unemployment develops, but not how employment develops. Unemployment statistics are not so useful, precisely for the reason given: people who've given up hope of finding employment are often excluded. Employment statistics are much more real, because the taxman wants his own, so it covers everyone who actually works. Of course, there are imperfections here as well: people may be working part-time when they actually would like to have a full time job. During the years 2000 - 2012, employment rate in United States has gone down from 74.1 % to 67.1 % [0]. In Germany, the rate has gone up from 65.6 % to 72.8 %. [1] In Sweden, it is relatively unchanged, 74.3 % to 73.8 %. [2] In Greece, the numbers have always been much lower: from 55.9 % down to 51.3 %. [3] E.g. Korea and France are surprisingly low, in the 60's. Israel has increased during this decade a lot, and it seems to be due to more women working. [0] http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/howdoesyourcountrycompare-unitedstates.htm http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/howdoesyourcountrycompare-united... [1] http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/howdoesyourcountrycompare-germany.htm http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/howdoesyourcountrycompare-german... [2] http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/howdoesyourcountrycompare-sweden.htm http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/howdoesyourcountrycompare-sweden... [3] http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/howdoesyourcountrycompare-greece.htm http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/howdoesyourcountrycompare-greece... Short-term comparisons of OECD here: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=STLABOUR http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=STLABOUR
acd 12y ago
Before the 2008 financial crisis 1 of 8 american children where on food stamps. 2015 1 of 5 children are on food stamps. In short this is bad. I bet banker bonuses have went in the totally opposite direction, ie up since the financial crisis. Here is the article http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/28/us-usa-economy-families-idUSKBN0L12E120150128 http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/28/us-usa-economy-fam...
SeanLuke 12y ago
I don't get this argument. Let's put aside that the author seems to be unaware that the BLS puts out multiple unemployment statistics. It seems to me that what really matters is not what statistic is being used but rather that the statistic being used is consistent from year to year so we can see what the trend in employment is.

349 points by mudil 12y ago

smackfu 12y ago

Boy, a polling org putting up political opinion pieces sure seems like a terrible idea.

greenjellybean 12y ago
I agree, gotta get those views though right?
zurn91 12y ago
Seems like a pretty damning article to everyone currently in a position of power, not one political side or the other.
- fixermark 12y ago
  Only depending on how one evaluates the non-factually-substantiated assertions in the opinion piece.
muglug 12y ago
It seems like it's equally about promoting one of Gallup's products, the "good job" metric they link to. I don't see anything partisan in the piece, simply because the same unemployment metric has been used by both Republicans and Democrats to further their goals.
- smackfu 12y ago
  Here's a piece from a conservative think tank that is essentially the same argument as what is in the "non-partisan" Gallup opinion poll: https://www.aei.org/publication/tracking-the-unreported-15-6-unemployed/ https://www.aei.org/publication/tracking-the-unreported-15-6... It's been a pretty common talking point.
jsnk 12y ago
I don't see anything wrong with presenting facts unless they are wrong. These facts don't look good on media outlets and Obama, but facts are facts. What I want to know is if these facts are true.
- fixermark 12y ago
  This is an opinion piece though; there are facts (in the "lies, damn lies, and statistics" category) that state summary information about the world, and this author interprets those facts in a particular fashion. There's not a lot of truth value one can assign to a statement like "A good job is an individual's primary identity, their very self-worth, their dignity -- it establishes the relationship they have with their friends, community and country." Well, I suppose one could if one were, say, Gallup and could poll on the question of how many people agree with that statement. But I'm unaware of such a poll at this time. ;)
jobu 12y ago
It seems more an opinion piece about the unemployment metric than about the politics. Granted, the White House is mentioned, but more for framing than any political slant.
andrewmutz 12y ago
Yeah, it's probably the CEO promoting his own book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_Jobs_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_Jobs_War
- smackfu 12y ago
  Aha, he has a book. Is he running for office soon?
astazangasta 12y ago
Do you are think people who run polling organizations don't have political views? How about Pew? Yahoo? Even the AP? They all do. Why not speak from them? If it doesn't compromise their survey methodology, what's the problem? If you don't know, Gallup was founded on an extremely ideological position: that public opinion matters, and politicians should seek to understand what it is as a guide, and we need tools and organizations devoted to studying it. It seems natural they would advocate for a better informed public.
- smackfu 12y ago
  I think that if the CEO of a polling company were to come out and endorse a candidate, I would have a really hard time trusting their polls on that race.

brohee 12y ago

That's why the number of people 18-70 employed full time would be a much more interesting number. No removing of prisoners, people on disability, housewifes, people that worked just one paid hour this week... The picture painted by that number would be bleak in most of the developing word, that's why it's not readily published.

maxerickson 12y ago
The BLS publishes pretty comprehensive statistics for the US: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm They still have some of the caveats that you mention, but not as many (and many of the reports are for some purpose where the caveat is sensible). For instance, this table breaks down full and part time employment: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t08.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t08.htm
nmcfarl 12y ago
The problem here is that it wouldn't necessarily be bleak. Housewives by choice, college kids and those just retired at 35 (or 65) are good things - these people are doing what they most want to do with their lives, and are having all their needs met without a job. However, as we haven't been collecting this data for the last hundred years we don't know what's normal for this number. And we don't know what percentage of the population are these "good unemployed" and what percentage of people are the traditional (bad) unemployed, so our guesses suck as well. I think this number should be released, but I don't think it will do much good for the first decade or 2. -- Addendum- after seeing maxericson's comment, I was reminded that I should not comment on things I don't know in depth. And it does seem like the U.S. does report the number of employed, it's just not what the press tracks. However, oddly, the numbers he links to seem to mainly be predicated on the same definition of unemployment, and do not seem to dive deeply into the category of "neither employed nor unemployed." Anyhow I'll leave my comment for the time being.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  I expect the other tables there contain the information to get some answer to your "neither employed nor unemployed", several of them analyze the workforce. For instance: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm I don't think I'm very informed on this topic, I just happen to know the BLS is tracking a lot more than gets reported in the news.

msoad 12y ago

All these facts were true when unemployment rate was higher. So even if the numbers are off by some offset they improved.

tomp 12y ago
It makes sense that the rate decreases - people give up hope and stop looking for jobs, or get shitty 3hrs/week jobs, and thus drop out of official statistics, without any actual improvement.
- mikecb 12y ago
  Here's U6, which takes into account these groups: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/U6RATE http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/U6RATE
- Touche 12y ago
  Presumably "giving up hope" would be evenly distributed, not all at once as to cause the rate to drop significantly.
- Varcht 12y ago
  Not only that but if they run out of benefits looking for a job they lose their eligibility to be "unemployed".
ColinDabritz 12y ago
Except that we don't track those numbers, so it could be that earlier in the recession more people were recently out of work, and looking hard, meaning they were counted in this number. Right now, it's been a lot longer, so perhaps many of them have given up, even if they need jobs, so they are no longer being counted. The number of people needing jobs, regardless of searching might have gone down similarly to the reported number, or it might have stayed exactly the same overall. Without the information, we don't know. I certainly know a few people who need jobs and can't get them, and some of them aren't being counted. Maybe it would be good to find out.
- 12y ago

me2i81 12y ago

The BLS puts out 6 different unemployment statistics for every period. U3 is the "official rate", but you can also look at the other ones, including U4 = U3 + "discouraged workers", U5 = U4 + "marginally attached" workers, U6 = U5 + part time workers who would like to be full time. You can make arguments about which measurement is "right", but putting out an editorial implying that there is sleight-of-hand going on is silly--all the measurements are available, and comparing a single one to itself over time as a "headline rate" is completely reasonable.

MayanAstronaut 12y ago
Very true, every stat has issues. Take payroll of population that this CEO thinks is a better metric. It totally ignores demographics of a aging population. Baby-boomers are retiring, how a metric based CEO ignores this shows were the real bias is.
- shubb 12y ago
  Uh, this metric is nuts, because it views anything that isn't 9-5 on a payroll as 'not a real job'. That ignores everything from independent contractors to seasonal work. These are huge components of the economy and always have been. So what does a movement in the metric even mean? Does it mean that people are working less, or does it mean that more people are self employed? Or students longer? I think wages are a more insightful way of estimating labor supply and demand. It's not great news: "U.S. real (inflation adjusted) median household income was $51,939 in 2013 versus $51,759 in 2012, statistically unchanged. The 2011 level was $51,842 and the 2010 level was $52,646. In 2013, real median household income was 8.0% lower than the 2007 pre-recession level of $56,436.[1]" (wikipediarite)
saosebastiao 12y ago
But if that U3 metric doesn't describe what normal people feel (the sort of people that don't know the difference between U3 and U6), then there is an argument for calling its "official" designation a sleight of hand. The U6 metric counts underemployment as unemployment. This reflects the common sentiment in the media, and it obviously shows a lack of recovery where other metrics have fully recovered by now.

PythonicAlpha 12y ago

Same as in Germany: Every government invents new possibilities to "count people out" of the official statistics. So the numbers fall, but unemployment stays the same or even rises.

scottkduncan 12y ago

"Gallup defines a good job as 30+ hours per week for an organization that provides a regular paycheck." Perhaps this definition hasn't caught up with the increase in freelancing and self-employment. Underemployment, particularly among lower skilled workers, surely is an issue in the U.S. but Gallup's approach could be undercounting some newer types of "good" jobs.

unreal37 12y ago
Yeah, agreed, that's a terrible definition of a good job. 1) Many people live off investments, pensions and passive income 2) Many people have income that is not regular or predictable, but large 3) Many people have good paying jobs that don't require 30 hours per week That's a very narrow definition. That's why they are only asking for a target of 50% I guess.

alyandon 12y ago

The various unemployment rates are pretty clearly defined and U3 is arguably not the most meaningful one to use but it is considered the "official" rate. More information here: http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate.jsp http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate.jsp

nostromo 12y ago

Take a look at this chart: http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/charts/employment/workforce-changes.html?LFPR-25-54-since-1990.gif http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/charts/employment/... I fear that 1999 was "peak labor" -- the point at which technology started to destroy more jobs than it created. We HN types live in a bubble in which times couldn't be better -- but in the larger economy there are fewer jobs paying and they're paying lower wages. It's troubling.

jryan49 12y ago
That graph is pretty misleading being only from 80% to 85%. Also it's only over a period of <20 years.
clavalle 12y ago
'fear'? That's an odd response to our most precious resource, human minds, being freed from time sucking drudgery. We've created the economic systems. They are not the Laws of the Universe. We can change them if they become a problem
- nostromo 12y ago
  I'm with you. Long term, this is good news. If we had basic income I'd be cheerful rather than worried. But we're not there yet, and you can't tell someone that is unemployed and can't find work that they should be happy to be free of the time sucking drudgery of employment. That's clearly a "let them eat cake" response.
  - abstractbill 12y ago
    I agree with (both of) you. How might I contribute to making Basic Income happen? I've been seeing more and more people talk seriously about it, which seems like a great sign, but perhaps not enough to change anything. Are there any advocacy efforts I could donate to?
    - maerF0x0 12y ago

zkhalique 12y ago

Deficit is dropping like a stone, but republicans aren't looking to bring back government jobs, they are just looking to use the flavor of the day to make people afraid of the Obama administration.

mod 12y ago
Smaller government has been a part of the Republican platform since long before Obama.
- zkhalique 12y ago
  It's part of the Republican platform when a Democrat president is in office, but it seems Republican presidents don't get the message. Deficits rose under every Republican president and dropped under every Democratic president, since the 1950s. But republicans always act as if it's the other way around. Bush's administration for example financed: medicare overhaul, no child left behind, two wars overseas, and bank bailouts. The way they did the spending had little oversight and the results were mediocre, or negative. Under Obama's admin at least there was "recovery.org - track the money" and more accountability. If republicans really want to cut government spending and deficits they should look into cutting the military budget. Not only does has it ballooned to take up nearly half of all non discretionary income, but apparently $7 TRILLION is unaccounted for. So until they do that, I don't consider their "platform" anything but a talking point to bring up ONLY against Democratic presidents. (In some way, it's good because it keeps them in check, but then republican presidents get a free ride from them.) http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/want-cut-government-waste-8-5-trillion-pentagon-142321339.html http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/want-cut-governm...

med00d 12y ago

The standard rate (U3) doesn't take underemployed or those who give up looking for work into account, but the U6 rate does. The U6 rate in January of 2009 was 14.2% and it is now down to 11.2% from its peak at 17.1% at the end of 2009/early 2010. Is the economy still struggling? Sure. Is unemployment headed in the right direction? Absolutely. Edit: One thing that people commonly like to do is compare the U6 rate to the U3 rates of the past. "Unemployment isn't 5.6%, it's really closer to 12% ..." That's foolish because it's an apples to oranges comparison. Yes 11.2% is high unemployment, but what we judge as the low/satisfactory unemployment rate would come in somewhere around 7-7.5% when looking at the U6 rate -vs- the 4-4.5% that's considered low/satisfactory using the U3 rate. Source: http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp "The U6 unemployment rate counts not only people without work seeking full-time employment (the more familiar U-3 rate), but also counts "marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons." Note that some of these part-time workers counted as employed by U-3 could be working as little as an hour a week. And the "marginally attached workers" include those who have gotten discouraged and stopped looking, but still want to work. The age considered for this calculation is 16 years and over."

enraged_camel 12y ago
>>The standard rate (U3) doesn't take underemployed or those who give up looking for work into account, but the U6 rate does. The U6 rate in January of 2009 was 14.2% and it is now down to 11.2% from its peak at 17.1% at the end of 2009/early 2010. Is the economy still struggling? Sure. Is unemployment headed in the right direction? Absolutely. But the decrease in unemployment and underemployment still don't paint the most accurate picture, because a lot of people who became employed did so at lower pay. I mean you may be employed full-time but if you're making 25% less than what you did before the crash, it's difficult to make the case that things are improving.
- med00d 12y ago
  Can you share any information about people taking the same job for less pay? I haven't seen evidence of this, but I don't doubt that it's happening in some places. I'll admit that I live in sort of a bubble because my salary has doubled since 2008 and the salaries of many of my friends and family have grown quite a bit as well. Granted, most of the people I know work in some sort of tech-related field.

clarkmoody 12y ago

Whether or not this information is always available each time BLS publishes the statistics is not the issue here. The potentially alarming angle is whether the drop in unemployment is attributed to people finding jobs or to people leaving the workforce. The current reporting of unemployment numbers certainly leaves room for spin, depending on how you want to package the news.

clavalle 12y ago
Only for people who don't know how to look up the data for themselves.

jobu 12y ago

Some people would argue that Social Security Disability Insurance is soaking up a huge number of people that would rather be working as well: http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ "But, in most cases, going on disability means you will not work, you will not get a raise, you will not get whatever meaning people get from work. Going on disability means, assuming you rely only on those disability payments, you will be poor for the rest of your life. That's the deal. And it's a deal 14 million Americans have signed up for."

declan 12y ago

This is well-known, I think, in economic circles. If you want another, arguably more accurate measure based on the government's previous (pre-1995) methodology, check out Shadowstats.com: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chart... It shows the real unemployment rate, counting short-term discouraged and marginally attached workers, to be around 22-23% today. That's up from around 12-13% before the 2008 recession.

blisterpeanuts 12y ago
Wow, that's a lot. But it could be right. There are a lot of people out there who are under employed, living on spouse's income, working under the table (hence under the radar), etc. I'd like to conduct an experiment in special economic zones as was done in China and other developing areas in the recent past. Designate some place (my choice would be an impoverished inner city ghetto area) as an SEZ, and make it: no corporate taxes, no income taxes; no municipal, county, or state taxes; no unions; and minimal regulations - e.g., waive EPA environmental impact studies, waive minimum wage (down to some minimal amount like $4/hour). Guarantee these conditions for the next 10 years. I suspect you'd see factories, plants, and offices flock to such a zone, and there'd be a mad scramble for real estate. Ancillary services would also boom--taxi, food, construction, office supplies, delivery and courier services, etc. I doubt it would ever happen given the number of laws and rules you'd have to waive, but it would be an interesting experiment in cutting through the red tape and getting back to basics.
saalweachter 12y ago
Just out of curiosity, do you know where he gets his statistic for long-term discouraged workers (he defines his measure of unemployment as 'U6 + long-term discouraged workers'; U6 only includes short-term discouraged workers, who looked for work in the last year but not in the last month.)? The closest analogue I can find is the labor force participation rate, which has dropped steadily by a total of 3% since 2008[1]; this number doesn't seem to square with his chart, however, so I'm curious if you know his underlying data source. [1] http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

tjradcliffe 12y ago

I'm not sure why this is being reported as new or interesting. "They don't count people who have stopped looking for work" has been reported to death for decades (always, year after year, decade after decade, as if no one had ever pointed this out before... it's one of those strange "perpetually surprising" stories, like "engineers look to nature for inspiration".) What is new and interesting is that in the past six years the American labour participation rate--the fraction of the working-age-adult population that is either employed or looking for work--has plummeted from 66% to 63%: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 To get a sense of what a big deal this is, you can re-run that chart to cover the full range of data from 1948-2014. After being flat at about 59% for two decades, the LPR begins to ramp up in the late 60's as Boomer women entered the workforce. It exhibits a broad flat peak from 1990 to 2008 at about the 66-67% level, and then starts its dramatic decline in sync with the financial crisis, and is now back at a level not seen since 1978. This is a demographic shift of enormous proportions, and the answer to "Why" is not known: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/06/the-incredible-shrinking-labor-force-again http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/06/t... There is a fairly desperate attempt to spin this as "Boomers retiring" but that runs into a problem of simple arithmetic: the population of the United States was 203 million in 1970, when the ramp-up in the LPR began. It is now 320 million, a factor of 1.5 higher. So for every Boomer retiring, there should be 1.5 new workers entering the workforce. Where are they?

acscott 12y ago
Agreed. They taught this in high school economics class--a public high school economics class. I think the article is playing into the political rhetoric. For a politician to use the Unemployment Rate as a benchmark is fine as a delta since all the U values seem to track each other if this chart is accurate: http://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate http://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate 3% of what? I would not characterize that as plummeting, but after looking at the graph you linked to, it very much looks like a "plummet". It doesn't sound like they have a definitive answer of the cause. The data is done by survey, and missed surveys are "imputed". (ftp://ftp2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/techdocs/cpsmar14.pdf) So I strongly suspect (but cannot support) there's probably some kind of assumption of a gaussian somewhere, and of course human behavior can assume many different "forms". In other words, I think they should be providing an error rate with these numbers. The other aspect is they probably have faith in the Gaussian I suspect.

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pbreit 12y ago

Right-leaning Gallup of course "forgets" to note that baby boomers retiring is making a material contribution.

joelhaus 12y ago

The delta is the most relatable conclusion the average person can draw from the unemployment rate reports. Otherwise, without taking some economics classes, you're doomed to misinterpret.

pbreit 12y ago

Right-leaning Gallup of course "forgets" to note that baby boomers retiring is making a material contribution. Also that the recession gave employers a good opportunity to automate workers out.

rilita 12y ago

"many Americans... don't know... Few Americans know this" "wondering what hollowed out the middle class" Perhaps the clueless people who don't know anything about what things mean ( the people this article is targeted at ) are the same people who are unemployed/under-employed ( notably also the group this is targeted at ) Summary of tfa: "The number news refers to as unemployment does not mean what you thought it means; it means X" Great, now how does this tell us anything we couldn't learn by looking up "unemployment rate" on wikipedia?

lutorm 12y ago
now how does this tell us anything we couldn't learn by looking up "xxx" on wikipedia? That applies to many things written. Not sure why you're singling this out. If every blog post written had to include original research, there wouldn't be much writing going on...
- rilita 12y ago
  This is hacker news, I expect that things posted here are noteworthy to people who know what they are doing and can research stuff they are interested in for themselves. Posts of the type "Did you know that the tooth fairy isn't real" are a waste of time to the professionals who read hacker news. Also, anything I spend my time reading through expecting something unique / new and find nothing I respond this way.

seizethecheese 12y ago

Economics student here. One reason Economists are interested in Unemployment is because when it reaches a certain level it puts pressure on prices through upwards wage pressure (fewer people looking for work means employers need to pay more.) Defining Unemployment narrowly as only those actively looking for work and recently unemployed provides for a statistic best measures the labor market's functioning. As others have noted, there are many other statistics that are collected which can elucidate social concerns.

mikecb 12y ago
NAIRU is hypothesized for some inflationary effects, but it's not well understood. Still, nice mention.
nostromo 12y ago
That shows problem with the official number though. If unemployment is down, wages should be up. But wages are down. That implies the unemployment rate is not accurately reflecting the true supply of labor. Or, it shows what I believe: demand for labor is decreasing even as the economy grows.
- intopieces 12y ago
  >Or, it shows what I believe: demand for labor is decreasing even as the economy grows. I hope this is the case. Automation should be putting a great deal of workers out of the labor force. The question is how can we deal with it: through workforce education and skill retooling? Through social assistance programs? It will likely be the question of our generation.
  - dtlawhon 12y ago
    Skill retooling would help to an extent, but one programmer today can do more work than 10 programmers could do 15 years ago, or maybe even 10 years ago. That trend isn't going away. Look at Django. If you include the hundreds of open-source modules with everything from messaging to billing to social media already coded, you can string together web apps in an hour that would take whole teams months and months from scratch. Within the next decade or two I'd estimate that programming will hit its peak employment and start to decline as more and more work is automated.

danans 12y ago

Some of the hypothetical examples of out-of-work people the author uses are pretty unlikely, and seem intended to cast an artificially wide net for his argument: i.e. engineers and health-care workers and math degree holders probably have lower than average unemployment rates, yet the author paints a picture of them mowing lawns and losing unemployment (i'm not saying it doesn't happen, just that it's unlikely). In a way, the author is committing the same sin as those he criticizes: he also oversimplifies the employment situation. The unemployment rate and the labor force participation rate vary dramatically by region and by profession (in California alone, compare the Bay Area to the Imperial Valley). It's much better for some highly skilled individuals, especially in booming metros, and much worse for others, who are in either low skilled, or in regions experiencing secular decline. Also, Gallup's own underemployment numbers (cited in the article) show both the unemployment rate and the underemployment rate at 7.1% and 15.9%, which is lower than where they were in Feb 2010, and that it is almost certainly lower than what they were in the depths of the great recession. Nobody would argue that these stats aren't as good as they should be, but to say that things haven't improved at all is very disingenuous, which is why this reads more like political anger-rousing article than a well-reasoned op/ed. The latter isn't surprising considering that the first rumbles of the next presidential election cycle are here. EDIT:wording

yason 12y ago

This is how it's in Europe as well: unemployment rates can be redefined to include or exclude certain people depending on what are the desired results. I usually look at employment rates instead which comes with its own peculiarities.

hnnewguy 12y ago
>unemployment rates can be redefined to include or exclude certain people depending on what are the desired results The metrics aren't redefined, nor are there "desired results". There are a variety of unemployment measures at the BLS, and the information on how each are calculated is freely available. Why assume conspiracy?

Animats 12y ago

Realistic numbers for unemployment and other economic statistics are available at "http://www.shadowstats.com" http://www.shadowstats.com". These are mostly computed from older Government definitions. Over the years, the way some key numbers are computed have been changed to make them look better. Shadowstats uses the old computation methods, which are more honest. It's a paid service ($175 a year) for people and businesses who need better numbers. Their unemployment rate, currently at 23%, includes long-term discouraged workers, which the BLS stopped counting in 1994. Their inflation value is based on the way inflation was computed before 1980. It includes house prices. Their value is currently 8%. This compares to the official number of 2%. Shadowstats has it right - increasing real estate prices are inflation.

evanpw 12y ago
Here is the opposing view: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/17/the-intellectual-cesspool-of-the-inflation-truthers/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/17/t....
mikeyouse 12y ago
Shadowstats is the dumbest thing I've ever read. If they have it right on inflation, the US has been in a recession since 1988. If they have it right re: house prices, houses are worth 60% less than they were in 1980 and we never had a housing bubble. One important note, Williams from Shadowstats definitely doesn't use 'the old computation methods' -- he just arbitrarily adds a 'factor' to the CPI rate and claims that's the real number. The BLS has published volumes about the idiocy of the assumptions behind Shadowstats. As have many economists from all over the spectrum. Literally nobody worth listening to takes them seriously. Why would banks willingly offer 30-year fixed mortgages at 3.6% if inflation was 8%/year? From the right-leaning AEI: http://www.aei.org/publication/why-amity-shlaes-is-dead-wrong-about-inflation/ http://www.aei.org/publication/why-amity-shlaes-is-dead-wron... Think for a moment what that means for real GDP growth the past three decades. Nominal GDP averaged about 5% from 1986 through 2013. Of that 5%, 2% was inflation and 3% was real GDP growth. If inflation was really 5% — and often, according to Williams, it was much, much higher — then there has been no real economic growth in America all that time. Actually, we have probably been in a long depression from the Reagan years forward. Or from the left-leaning John Aziz: http://azizonomics.com/2013/06/01/the-trouble-with-shadowstats/ http://azizonomics.com/2013/06/01/the-trouble-with-shadowsta... But Shadowstats is not calculating inflation any differently. They are not using the 1980s or 1990s methodology that they believe would be higher. All Shadowstats is doing is taking the CPI data and adding on an arbitrary constant to make it look like inflation is higher!

jpetersonmn 12y ago

I personally don't know anyone that doesn't already understand the things this article is pointing out.

goorpyguy 12y ago

I've been thinking for a while that there need to be incentives put in place for companies who short-change their their employees (and by extension, the public as a whole) by hiring 3 part-time workers instead of one full-time. This goes towards the "good job" / "American Dream" aspect of the article. People shouldn't have to work 2 or 3 part-time jobs to make a living if they don't want to, just because those are the jobs available. If somebody wants full-time employment (for which they are otherwise qualified), it would be better for them to have that. Of course, it is cheaper for the corporations to use part-time, because it keeps them flexible with scheduling/substitutes and due to added costs like benefits etc. I have been trying to figure out whether it makes sense to offer tax incentives/penalties which would push the balance towards more full-time jobs instead of part-time. One piece I have envisioned is forcing employers to offer the benefits a full-time employee would receive prorated to part-timers, with a penalty added for splitting it up. Make them want to offer a full-time job instead. The part I am worried about is whether the effect is too strong and prevents somebody who actually only wants part-time work from finding employment (e.g.: a student, full-time parent, senior citizen or handicapped person). There needs to be some part-time work available, but generally a member of the workforce probably wants a full-time job.

brc 12y ago
The issue is already the amount of regulations that attach to a full time worker. Adding more will only generate adverse affects. Using words like 'forcing' and 'penalising' will work in the opposite direction to what you might hope. You already identify the issue - full time workers require benefits and the like. For many small organisations, these make the cost of a full time worker prohibitive, so they fill in with multiple part time instead. The employer is incentivised to keep people part time.
blisterpeanuts 12y ago
You're proposing negative incentives, which may have the unintended consequence of eliminating both full-time and part time positions as companies opt to cut costs and outsource to overseas service providers. The danger is real. There are very few activities which can't be done remotely today, other than... massage, food service, medical (but even then some can be outsourced, e.g. radiology). I would prefer to see positive incentives, e.g. a tax break for every full time job that is filled domestically. Give them a financial reason to hire full timers, and they'll hire full timers. Punish them for hiring part timers, and they'll just move overseas, and then another few million people will be permanently unemployed or under employed.

stalcottsmith 12y ago

The author is not a dummy. He is CEO of a top tier polling organization. Surely he understands U3 and U6, etc. He may have partisan leanings to the extent that this can be taken as a criticism of the current administration. Current policies may not be helping but I'm not sure that any partisan solutions provide the answers needed. The bigger picture here is that the US sacrificed some broad-based increase in prosperity over the last 20+ years while helping the developing world to climb out of true poverty. You cannot bring 1 billion Chinese (and to a lesser extent other peoples) into the "middle class" through trade while at the same time sustaining the exceptionally high standard of living of so many Americans -- at least not without some major, hopefully-temporary dislocations. At the same time, somewhat related to this, we are witnessing the passing of a period in which America enjoyed unique competitive advantages which are unlikely to re-occur in a similar form. No amount of IT innovation can make up for the passing of peak-US-cheap-oil-production (1970s), or the loss or diminishing of the dollar's reserve status and the US's central role in global trade (ongoing), or the temporary advantage of economic competitors being crushed in WWII (50's and 60's)... The Americans worst affected by these policies were bought off to some extent with cheap imported consumer goods (think Walmart), oodles of credit, the spread of two income households and of course benefit programs. Now, if you were to try to address this problem sincerely from a position that jobs and employment are desirable social goods you wish to maximize, you might aim for sensible policies that would reduce the cost of living for typical Americans (allowing them to attain desirable, economically justifiable employment at globally competitive wages), increase labor mobility (ability to move for opportunity), and reduce the barriers to employment at the bottom of the employment ladder. Secondary policy objectives might include simplifying the tax system, encouraging household formation, and restructuring education so that expensive college degrees are less necessary. A lot of this has to do with how people are living in what kind of housing, how that housing is financed and what kind of transport they use to get to work and what kind of shape they are in mentally, physically and perhaps even spiritually to be be productive. I think major changes are needed to achieve broad-based 21st century prosperity growth in the US. Some of these changes would be deeply unpalatable and will only be considered if economic conditions worsen substantially. Some here seem to think we are entering a post-employment society where jobs will be increasingly scarce because they are not needed and that this is a good thing. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. This kind of thing is the hallmark of privileged bubble thinking. If you really remove the dignity of work from so many, you run the risk of making the people themselves seem redundant.

jordache 12y ago

it's funny that some right winger would link this ridiculous article here, thinking it would fool the HN collective.

pkaye 12y ago

I was once trying to compare US unemployment to other countries but was not sure which "U" statistic is closest to how others measure unemployment. Anyone has an idea for example within the EU?

hudibras 12y ago
U3 http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=36324 http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=36324 One of the reasons the U3 definition won't be changed (or alternately, why the other U rates were created) is that it's harmonized with the other OECD countries' rates. So, say, a 6% unemployment rate means the same thing in the U.S., Germany, Japan, Greece, etc.

yohann305 12y ago

It is far from being perfect metrics, I agree. However, it is a good way to compare unemployment fluctuation over time as long as we keep the same paramaters over time.

marquis 12y ago

This American Life has an excellent exposé on this topic, from 2013: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/transcript http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/t...

chipuni 12y ago

I look at Gallup's web page about U.S. employment (http://www.gallup.com/poll/125639/Gallup-Daily-Workforce.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/125639/Gallup-Daily-Workforce.asp...), and I have a question: The sum of their "% Payroll to population", "% Underemployed", and "% Unemployed" appears to be about 70%. If they're disjoint categories, what is the other 30%?

samspot 12y ago

> None of them will tell you this: If you, a family member or anyone is unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a job -- if you are so hopelessly out of work that you've stopped looking over the past four weeks -- the Department of Labor doesn't count you as unemployed Even the local news gives this disclaimer almost every time they mention the unemployment rate. Maybe it's not that nobody tells you, but that the author just didn't notice it.

franciscop 12y ago

If we counted Spanish unemployment like that it would surely not be the same rate as it is today, 23.7%. This definitely includes people that has given up hope about finding a job. On the other hand, it doesn't include those who are working without a legal contract, which I am sure would lower the percentage significantly since it's not uncommon.

neves 12y ago

I always thought that the great lie in the employment statistics was due to high percentage of the American population that is in jail. USA has the greatest number of prisoners of the developed countries, and it skews the statistics.

jpatokal 12y ago
Sure, but the total prison population has been static to falling since 2008 or so. This means it's increasing the labor pool, not shrinking it. http://amsaltz.com/tag/achievement-gap/ http://amsaltz.com/tag/achievement-gap/
ptaipale 12y ago
It cannot be a very great lie, because the incarceration rate is <1 %, and unemployment is generally an order of magnitude larger. And: incarceration rate includes also people who are not in in the potential workforce (i.e. are not working age).

debrice 12y ago

If you're getting unemployment benefit but do some undeclared job, you are employed but count as unemployed. If you're not looking for a job, it's fair to not be counted as unemployed. Otherwise you can also count any kid in age of working in the statistics or family who have decided to have one member employed and the other taking care of the family. The writer (CEO of gallup) pretty much explains that the stats behind the title is not what HE thinks it is. This statistic describes those who want to work and cannot find a job.

ThomPete 12y ago

I must say I am chocked at how many people seem to defend the U3 definition vs. U6 As far as can tell the number of actual fulltime jobs is decreasing and the number of jobs that aren't providing full time income is increasing. Unless you have a political agenda why would you insist that U3 is better than U6?

mikeyouse 12y ago
Because it's directly comparable with the rest of the worked and is the measure we've used historically - both of which have value. If others decide U6 is the most important figure, it's reported in literally the same publication as the U3 figure and they can reference it accordingly.
- ThomPete 12y ago
  The US and the EU measures unemployement differently. Also U3 is hiding things U6 aren't.

bibabo 12y ago

Most interesting is this: Many people compare other countries unemployment to US U3 not US U6/U5 while countries with gov. unemployement benefits (unemployed are people who get money, which includes people not looking or with a small amount of income) have numbers more in tune with U6/U5 and should be compared to U6/U5. This makes the US economy always looks nicer. (Same for GDP with chained dollars btw.)

dredmorbius 12y ago

Workforce participation, median, minimum, and bottom decile wage are in many ways vastly more informative than unemployment numbers. Yes, even the expanded U6 values BLS provides. Participation tells you how many people are working. Minimum wage tells you how well the worst-paid fare (and as Adam Smith notes in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, "A man must always live by his work" -- which he expands to mean: wages must provide not only for the laborer, but for a spouse, children, and the education of those children to provide for the next generation of workers. Median wage tells you where the typical worker is. It's not skewed upwards by a few highly-compensated individuals as mean would be. If you and I are at a bar and Bill Gates walks in, the mean wealth has just jumped tremendously, the median not so much. Bottom decile tells you how those at the bottom rung of the compensation ladder, though not necessarily at minimum wage, are doing. Smith has a considerable amount to say on this as well. The biggest problem with unemployment (and other economic / econometric metrics) is that once defined they become political, and an change to more meaningful statistics tends to make the administration in power look worse.

tezza 12y ago

Others have mentioned U6 etc. The issue of the headline figure not capturing certain key features is mentioned as nauseum on CNBC a or any decent financial news source. Gallup and the person who posted this is trying to make it sound like a revelation. Further almost all types of employment has improved. Here in the UK we have a similar obfuscation technique where the opposition says more women are out of work than ever, whereas the government says more women are in work than ever. Both are true, but behind the scenes it is because there is the largest population of work aged women ever.

bayesianhorse 12y ago

Touting these unemployment numbers as a "big lie" is equally misleading. Especially when comparing this number to a past situation of which we don't know the disappointing details. Just saying "only 44% of adults have a good job" doesn't sound like a good number either. This doesn't seem to count mothers, "house wifes" (if they choose that occupation voluntarily and gladly), college students and probably not even grad students.

unreal37 12y ago
Doesn't include retired people, investors, the rich, people with an irregular but high income, actors, singers, contract consultants, people taking a long vacation or sabbatical, people who own a business in the early stage, y-combinator companies...

kwhitefoot 12y ago

On the subject of Basic Income. I think most people are missing some very important points by concentrating so hard on the costs, that is, the money provided to the recipients of the Basic Income. - Poor people spend pretty much everything they get and they do so locally, so a very large proportion of the BI will be immediately spent in the local economy thus increasing the opportunities for people to provide goods and services. - Having an income that will prevent you starving to death or having your house or car repossessed means that you have the opportunity to turn down a poorly paid or dangerous job. This will go some way to rectifying the imbalance of power between employees and employers and drive up wages at the bottom end - BI is not charity and is generally not intended to be means tested; every citizen gets it rich and poor alike. It is income and taxable in the normal way.

dkrich 12y ago

This article reads like a transcript of a drunk guy at a bar explaining his political point of view. Lots of stated assumptions about what other people don't know, backed up with zero facts to substantiate any claims made therein. He claims repeatedly that "most people don't know [some fact about what goes into calculating the unemployment rate]." I think actually most people who read the news do, in fact, know that people who have been chronically out of work and given up looking are not counted among the unemployed. How could they not? It was hammered home over and over in the midst of the recession. He never provides any numbers to support the claim that a large percentage of people fall into that category. He just states that it's left out of the calculation, that few people know it, and then leaves you to assume that therefore this must be a significant percentage of the population. Stupid article.

ptaipale 12y ago

It's interesting that so often everyone talks about how unemployment develops, but not how employment develops. Unemployment statistics are not so useful, precisely for the reason given: people who've given up hope of finding employment are often excluded. Employment statistics are much more real, because the taxman wants his own, so it covers everyone who actually works. Of course, there are imperfections here as well: people may be working part-time when they actually would like to have a full time job. During the years 2000 - 2012, employment rate in United States has gone down from 74.1 % to 67.1 % [0]. In Germany, the rate has gone up from 65.6 % to 72.8 %. [1] In Sweden, it is relatively unchanged, 74.3 % to 73.8 %. [2] In Greece, the numbers have always been much lower: from 55.9 % down to 51.3 %. [3] E.g. Korea and France are surprisingly low, in the 60's. Israel has increased during this decade a lot, and it seems to be due to more women working. [0] http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/howdoesyourcountrycompare-unitedstates.htm http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/howdoesyourcountrycompare-united... [1] http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/howdoesyourcountrycompare-germany.htm http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/howdoesyourcountrycompare-german... [2] http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/howdoesyourcountrycompare-sweden.htm http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/howdoesyourcountrycompare-sweden... [3] http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/howdoesyourcountrycompare-greece.htm http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/howdoesyourcountrycompare-greece... Short-term comparisons of OECD here: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=STLABOUR http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=STLABOUR

acd 12y ago

Before the 2008 financial crisis 1 of 8 american children where on food stamps. 2015 1 of 5 children are on food stamps. In short this is bad. I bet banker bonuses have went in the totally opposite direction, ie up since the financial crisis. Here is the article http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/28/us-usa-economy-families-idUSKBN0L12E120150128 http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/28/us-usa-economy-fam...

SeanLuke 12y ago

I don't get this argument. Let's put aside that the author seems to be unaware that the BLS puts out multiple unemployment statistics. It seems to me that what really matters is not what statistic is being used but rather that the statistic being used is consistent from year to year so we can see what the trend in employment is.