They just stopped counting the people that don want to work.... and let me tell you there are a LOT of them. Ask any police officer or firefighter about apartment complexes full of people who do not want to work, can not work because drugs, or are on disability.
They're not included in 'unemployment' as commonly cited, but they're regularly counted.
The labor force participation rate describes how many people of working age are trying to work. 'NEET' stats remove from that number education or vocational training students.
And economists use multiple definitions of unemployment accounting for many different things. U3 is commonly cited, but misleading for this purpose. U4 captures people who want to work but assume it isn't available, U5 captures other unattached workers, and U6 even adds part time workers seeking full time work.
It also doesn't count people who want to work, but have given up after years of trying. IIRC, unemployment is calculated based on the number of people who are actively filing unemployment paperwork.
U4: U3 + "discouraged workers", or those who have stopped looking for work because current economic conditions make them believe that no work is available for them.
Isn't that called discouraged workers and covered under U5 unemployment? Unemployment is not based on the those who filled out the paperwork... it is based on a population survey. They call up random people and ask a series of questions. There are different levels of unemployment like those who are discouraged or underemployed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment#United_States_Bur...
(Employed / seeking employment) is the U3 employment rate - it's a perfectly legitimate statistic for understanding how the job search is going. When economists want to count the temporarily discouaged, they use U4. And when they want to count those not working for other reasons, they use U5. It's annoying that we treat U3 as "the unemployment rate" for political discourse, but it's a perfectly reasonable metric for economic analysis, and I wish people would stop pretending it's some kind of trick.
Those are also counted, the Fed releases multiple unemployment numbers, the one everyone thinks of as "the unemployment number" is U3 but you might want to look into U6 which includes discouraged workers and those who want to work but haven't looked recently and the underemployed.
U6 is: Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force
dsr_ followed the column down a bit off and got the Feb 2017 seasonally adjusted number (they are one column apart) - they should really separate those better
Also worth noting that U-3 is an international definition of unemployment. If different countries use different definitions, then comparing rates among countries would be pretty much meaningless.
They didn't stop, these folks have never been counted in U3, the most commonly cited measure of unemployment. BLS publishes multiple unemployment rates, six in fact, that capture different aspects of the issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment#United_States_Bur...
I found this graph helpful[1]. U6 has come down along with the other unemployment numbers, but it also shows how historically bad the recession was. For those affected by it, that's six years they will never get back - they might be "employed" now, but with prospects that are far worse than if the crash hadn't happened.
I skimmed the article, so I may have missed it, but the article doesn’t seem to mention that official numbers exclude long-term discouraged workers. Apparently they were removed from official numbers in 1994.
The US - the BLS - commonly tracks multiple variations of employment. The two most common are the U3 and U6. They're very well known and easily accessible. Just punch in "u6 unemployment rate" into Google.
1. I thought the government included these people in their questionable statistics. I don't doubt what you say though. Those unemployment have always baffled me. If they were rigged, I wouldn't be suprised.
2. My biggest gripe is anyone with eyes knows certain sectors of the economy are doing well, but it's still dismal out there. So many union jobs were just obliterated.
3. That "abled bodied, but not working number" is so high. I believe it's higher than ever? Higher than when women had the luxury of staying home to raise their kids?
4. I constantly remember Janet Yellen commenting on that sticky unemployment number of people who just weren't working. Why? We all knew why.
5. Yes--some gave up, but so many of the jobs being are just aweful. Slick Tech firms getting desperate people to use their vechicle to carry the wealthy around, deliver their toys, and put their food on the doorstep. All Independent Contractors of course. Daddy needs to make his nut, and live like them? Be more foxy than the next guy, but talk a liberal game. And so many really lousy jobs. Jobs that immigrants are passing on.
So good luck America. This is the lovely new economy. The poor catering to the wealthy. Maybe it's always been this way, but in the past, it wasen't so noticeable. There was a time where being the cleverest rat wasen't cool. Now they put them on a stage?
I pity the day the the money runs dry in tech. I guess most of you will have a spare room to retreat to?
Big Head got elected because he said what everyone was seeing with their own eyes, especially in reguards to the horrid economy. Absolutely nothing has changed in 420 days. Nothing. If anything he's just making it worse.
What I find more depressing the wealthy have brainwashed people into thinking this is all just fine, and dandy.
Let's help out those poor people that country. "What you're better than them?" Being a American has always been about denial. That is what use to make living here feel like a dream. The dream is diluted, and their will never be a revolt.
Cheap tech, and a questionable educational system solved that minor worry that used to keep the wealthy boys on edge. "Just put a spin on the abuse. They won't notice. Even if they catch on, what power do they have?"
I'm probably counted different now that my six months of unemployment have run out. I didn't necessarily 'turn down' work but I also didn't apply for jobs that would have me driving over an hour one way for $12-15 for what is supposed to be a somewhat experienced position (IT work w/ a lot of requirements). This is in LA so shit's already experience.
Right now, I could've been working two weeks ago if a recruiter had had their shit together (interviewed and got job four weeks ago; actual paperwork took two weeks; when I could've started, they found out their contract w/ company had expired).
It's very frustrating out here even having done the things the media bullhorn has said to do - work in tech, work in an office, etc etc.
Unemployment rate might be the most important indicator politically, but it really is the wrong one for most of the things we care about.
What it tells you is (mostly) how much unemployment will be paid out and (to some extent) how available workers are.
Anyway, "healthy" unemployment rate is usually 4%-7%.
The "right" metric is "employment rate," which is not the inverse. This is just the people working out of the working age population. It doesn't care whether people are unemployed, unable to work, retired, students, stay at home parents... Just how many people work.
This is usually around 60%-70%.
...so obviously "unemployed" leaves out the vast majority of non workers.
If you want to compare one area to another, for example, compare employment rates. Worried about techno-"unemployment," monitor employment rates. Slower, steadier societal effects will show here.
This metric is called the labor force participation rate. It's currently at 63%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the times series since 1948: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
The BLS does indeed provide that data. The total number of multiple job holders is at 8.1 million, representing 5.2% of the total persons employed. As a percentage that's approximately where it was in 2006-2007 before the great recession. The peak during the great recession period was around 5.5%.
That figure has climbed slightly year over year, from 7.980 million to 8.130 million. That might imply slight stress in the labor market, in terms of cost vs wages, but nothing significant yet. It also might indicate there are some good paying side jobs that have become available due to the labor scarcity and people are snapping them up to improve their financial situation. The coming year will be interesting, as to whether the much anticipated wage growth finally shows up, or whether we're trapped in a Japan debt box of perpetual low inflation and low wage growth despite very low unemployment.
It's more than one job at the same time, during the measured period of time.
The BLS routinely polls for why as well. Typically it's about 1/3 say it's to earn more money, 1/3 say it's specifically to deal with debt, and ~15% will say it's for enjoyment (they like the second job).
Multi-job holding peaked (all-time high) in 1995 at around 6.8%.
That would be income adjusted for PPP, similar to adjusted for inflation.
Still not quite what the OP wants, I suspect. I think we means "how many people earn enough to live decently, but that's hard.
I might be a 20 to student in Paris living on €1,200, consider myself fairly well off. House-sharing, couch surfing holidays, €1 drinks every Tuesday ..student living.
A 40 yo might consider this a poverty income. "Getting by" generally seems objective enough at first glance (rent on basic accomodation, etc), but culture and expectations play a big role. Also expectations about the future and stuff.
Basically , it's complicated. ..and outside the scope of an "measure," imo.
I think it's more useful to construct a picture from several simpler, more objective sources. Add up "living costs" to get your "minimum decent living' and then see how many people/households/workers have that much income.
It's never gonna be a real measure though, because "decent living" depends on circumstances.
An answer to you and to most of the other comments in this thread:
This isn't what I was getting at. Take for example university students. Their earning power is significantly smaller than more experienced people. They also tend to need a lot less money, because they're usually single, don't often have a mortgage, live in a small apartment or in their parent's house, etc.
Many students work part-time in a restaurant or similar. For them, this will probably be a "livable wage", whether because their needs are smaller as discussed, or because they're relying to some extent on their parents.
Take another person of the same age, but who has a family and no parents for support, and assume they earn the same. For them, this same wage is not livable.
How would you statistically separate these cases? I'm not saying there isn't a way, I'm just wondering what it is!
"A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation. Mr. Cantillon seems, upon this account, to suppose that the lowest species of common labourers must everywhere earn at least double their own maintenance, in order that one with another they may be enabled to bring up two children; the labour of the wife, on account of her necessary attendance on the children, being supposed no more than sufficient to provide for herself. But one half the children born, it is computed, die before the age of manhood. The poorest labourers, therefore, according to this account, must, one with another, attempt to rear at least four children, in order that two may have an equal chance of living to that age. But the necessary maintenance of four children, it is supposed, may be nearly equal to that of one man. The labour of an able-bodied slave, the same author adds, is computed to be worth double his maintenance; and that of the meanest labourer, he thinks, cannot be worth less than that of an ablebodied slave. Thus far at least seems certain, that, in order to bring up a family, the labour of the husband and wife together must, even in the lowest species of common labour, be able to earn something more than what is precisely necessary for their own maintenance; but in what proportion, whether in that above mentioned, or in any other, I shall not take upon me to determine."
Oh, silly me, Adam Smith, again. Wealth of Nations.
There's a further bit on socially-determined necessities, beginning at:
"By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without...."
Official unemployment is usually U3, but there are the U4 (discouraged), U5 (have not looked recently, out of market), U6 (underemployed). But nothing like are able to work physically and mentally, just don't have a job or don't want a job at current remuneration.
It's incredibly dumb for anyone to fixate on the unemployment rate as a long term metric. Because it's really a measure of employment 'churn'
So employment churn is at historically low rates really. And this is good exactly why? Especially since the population to employment ratio hasn't changed at all since the great recession. This means you have a very non dynamic employment situation going on. That's actually not good and the Fed's preferred fix, having businesses fire a few percent of the workforce isn't a fix at all.
Politicians and journalists like it because it's fast moving, and tends to reflect (amplify even) recent economic changes. ...I think it does (depending on local "accounting' quirks) tend to reflect how long it takes to find work.
But for that, why not measure that directly, or churn directly.
> Because it's [the unemployment rate] really a measure of employment 'churn'
This is not accurate. Almost the opposite is true. More people switch jobs when unemployment is low.
> So employment churn is at historically low rates really.
This is also not accurate. The US government measures job churn---it is called the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS)---and it is as high as it has ever been.
Unemployment metrics usually focus on people who are employable and willing but unable to find work for extended periods of time. People who are switching jobs do not fall into this category.
These changes in the past of been a pendulum. I don't think the current changes are. Increasing automation, AI, etc, are vastly increasing the productivity of the individual worker and replacing jobs. For a long time there's been an excellent well balanced feedback loop, more productivity = higher pay, higher pay = more purchasing power, more purchasing power = more production needed = more employment.
However, wages are starting to stagnate. It could actually be one of the reasons we are getting such high employment. The feedback loop will stop. We as a society will need to decide what to do when it no longer makes sense to employ most people.
The cost is lower because employer paid premiums for health insurance are tax exempt.
That being said, it ends up as a tax on dual income households, I don't get paid more if I opt out of my employer's health insurance even though it saves them a significant amount of money (~$5,000 a year). That's at the employer's discretion but in my experience most employers don't come close to matching compensation.
> For a long time there's been an excellent well balanced feedback loop, more productivity = higher pay,
Um, that feedback loop existed until 1972 or so, but has not existed since then. For most people in the United States, it has never existed in their lifetime.
I'd like to understand how record employment affects 401k contributions and thereby, fuels the already heady stock market.
And what's happening with home ownership and real estate prices across the nation? For example, my development has 115 homes. Zero are for sale, and the last sale was nearly 1 year ago. There is no inventory.
Does it constitute a virtuous cycle for the economy? Next up, inflation and increasing interest rates as the fed works to keep the economy from overheating.
> It's not the record for labor force participation rate obviously. That will never be hit again, thanks to the US aging.
Maybe, but not necessarily. The Labor force is defined as those of "working age", so if they age out of the tracked range, then they no longer accounted for in the labor force participation rate calculation.
There may be a general population participation rate (not sure if I have the right term here) for which your comment could be projected if current demographic trends hold, but that can be shifted by things like shifting immigration or fertility rate trends.
It'd be theoretically possible, however the rate at which the US is aging, puts a very low likelihood on it happening. We'd need an extraordinary burst of immigration, or perhaps to start counting robots as workers and taxing them accordingly (which we may yet do).
This was a big headline the other day:
"People over 65 years old would outnumber children by 2035, a first in U.S. history, according to updated projections released by the Census Bureau on Tuesday."
I'm pretty sure inflation under these circumstances occurs independently of further fed intervention, the classical economic theory being that competition for labor (under low unemployment) drives an increase in salaries unaccompanied by an increase in productivity, resulting in inflation
Right but traditional inflation fears might be overblown... everything is basically manufactured in China or other low wage countries now. Food production is highly mechanized. And most jobs are in the service sector. All I can think of is that inflation manifests in insurance, healthcare, and housing costs.
Productivity can still be measured in service, although in certain cases abstractly, but for example a barber is a service worker with pretty measurable productivity. I think inflation can still occur within the classical model wrt the service sector. An example being that a restaurant has trouble keeping dishwasher positions filled, incentivizing them to increase dishwasher wages, requiring higher menu prices to compensate.
As long as the US continues to maintain a comparative advantage in certain industries (e.g. software) I see no reason why they will be immune to wage inflation either. In fact this is arguably already occurring
I can't confirm this with data but my guess would be that even though unemployment is low, people are generally doing more work for less money - and everything costs more (especially housing)...but that's just what income inequality looks like.
There hasn't been a massive explosion in homelessness in San Francisco. SF's homeless rate hasn't changed much in 15-20 years, it was just as high during the last economic boom in 2005-2006. It was nearly as high on a population ratio basis during the peak of the economy in 2000 as well, despite a lower U6 unemployment rate at that time.
General homelessness was 5,376 in 2000. It was 6,248 in 2005. It was 6,686 in 2015.
SF is doing an extraordinarily poor job of managing its homelessness, despite their affluence and vast resources. That's the fundamental problem.
Sure: Employment and "has enough money to live" are not the same thing. The second one is a far more interesting metric, but also far more sober for most governments, so they don't use it.
I find it hard to imagine that so many people have jobs and live on the street at the same time. “Working homeless” is a thing but typically means couch surfing or car camping, not rough sleeping.
Homelessness in SF isn’t actually exploding, it’s getting more visible because development (to accommodate the labor force boom!) is steadily chipping away at the “out of sight, out of mind” areas where tent cities used to hide. Such sites receive most/all development because the NIMBYism and anti-gentrification activism are so much stronger in populated areas.
Kashkari (Presidnet of Minneapolis Fed): "We were at maximum employment. We are now at maximumer employment."
Michael Lebowitz: "So explain why monetary policy is still in emergency mode. Funds at 1.25-1.50 and over $4 trln balance sheet."
Kashkari: "I thought the "tongue-in-cheekiness" of my tweet would be obvious. Allow me to translate: We keep saying we are at max employment and then all these people choose to work. It suggests we weren't really at max employment."
Reggie Palatty: "Dude I loved you in the Mummy Returns"
To take a step back, the official unemployment # is only important in so far as its in the Federal Reserve's dual mandate to maximize employment while keeping inflation steady and moderate. Kashkari's comments suggest that we haven't hit max employment, and that not even high ranking members of the Fed have a firm grasp on what "max employment" looks like in the contemporary economy.
Fed wants to wait until we hit "max employment" to begin normalizing, which is akin to pumping the economic brakes. Normalizing = raising interest rates + removing bank liquidity = increasing cost and friction of borrowing/loaning = slows down economic activity.
The real question remains: how will employment and the overall economy change when the Fed starts to normalize interest rates and reduce the securities holdings from QE on its balance sheet. In theory it should reduce the rate of job creation.
So even with "record-low unemployment", most people still don't make decent, living wages. At least that's what the article seems to be saying. Salaries aren't going up significantly. Workers have more choices, but clearly, even at record-low unemployment, the market fails most workers. That's an interesting insight as it might lead to more people to question the idiocy of letting chaos run markets by leaving them unregulated.
> most people still don't make decent, living wages.
> the market fails most workers.
Neither of those assertions is either in the article, or supported by fact. The vast majority of workforce members are employed and live well above the poverty line.
I truly don't understand why there seems to be a belief that every single job that exists should provide a 'living wage'. There is such as thing as a starter job, and there types of jobs that don't provide 25-50K/yr in value to either the employer or market. It's just not reasonable to presume (or enforce a policy such ) that any amount or type of work a business owner needs done should automatically result in the employee being completely taken care of.
"Unemployment" has been such a gamed term, especially since the Great Recession (at least, from my current perspective), that someone would have to argue me back to believing, to any significant degree, the numbers they are posting and stories they are telling about same.
Well you can easily drill down through the murk, the BLS provides a plethora of data.
For example, a common criticism about the US employment picture, on sites such as zerohedge, is to claim that it's all part time work. We have these numbers however, so there's no need to speculate.
Part-time workers as a percent of the total employed, is at the same level it was in 1999. Around 17.7%. That rate continued to move lower until mid 2000, when it hit around 16.7% before the recession.
Employment for 27 weeks or longer (1/2 year or longer), is back to a healthy level, where it was during the good times in 2005-2006 and matching 1996-1997. Employment for the other duration periods has seen a similar recovery.
The long-term unemployed as a percentage of the total unemployed, is back to 1995 and 2005 levels.
All the more impressive, these vast improvements are coming down off of an extreme hammer to the labor market from the great recession. The ~2001-02 recession was a blip by comparison, and yet the labor market has managed to get back to what would be considered healthy numbers in both the mid 1990s and mid 2000s. In fact, compared to the 1970s and 1980s, current numbers would be considered amazing.
And further to the positive side, the benefits of this labor improvement have been entirely wide-spread. Black, white, asian, hispanic, everyone is seeing a labor boom.
As an aside, politically, I'm entirely unwilling to credit this to the last year. My own prior reading (ok, mostly of news articles, albeit reasonably well-informed ones), described such effects as typically being a minimum of a year out from policy initiatives. 18 months being a more typical minimum.
The Great Recession hit me hard, and I've not seen the bounce back. Nor have others I know in my age bracket (later middle-age). That may color my perspective.
The country spent years digging out from the last financial disaster. And not the messaging seems to be, if you didn't grab as much as you could, it's your own fault.
P.S. And I do recall, a few years ago, the emphasis upon short term unemployment rates, avoiding discussion of the long-term unemployed and those who'd, from the perspective of the parameters of the statistical exercise, exited the labor market.
Thank you for addressing that to some extent. I do wonder, though, within specific demographics, what the levels of such may continue to be.
Have an upvote. I'm not complaining about your response -- to be clear. :-)
> I'm entirely unwilling to credit this to the last year.
I'm in full agreement with that. This is a multi-stage procession of factors stretching back to 2010-2011. Economies, left well enough to their own and barring any extreme events, tend to improve/recover naturally.
I also think we're going to need more time to fully recover from the severe damage that occurred during the great recession. The complex effects and suffering of that kind of hit are well beyond the headline numbers and should be expected to take many years to heal. Economists are puzzled by wage growth not being higher (eg 3.5% vs 2.5% or similar) based on where unemployment is at - I think it's because we've only just got back to something close to a healthy labor market, whereas they think we're in the midst of something a notch or two higher than that already. To recover from economic trauma, it's not enough to just return to former headline numbers, you actually have to recover from the psychology damage (as is well known the great depression, which was of course even worse, left people traumatized for life). People behave differently after that kind of trauma, they make different choices, they fear risk more (which can lead to job stagnation, or fear to pursue better opportunities etc), and so on.
Trump may or may not unleash some so called animal spirits, in his rah rah behavior and policies (and or harm as much, from strategically poor thinking on trade), however the economy was grinding this direction likely regardless of anything the President might do. Very generally speaking, outside of insane policy settings (eg a corporate tax rate at 70%), if you manage to not upset/crash an economy for an extended period of time, and otherwise maintain a reasonable playing field, you'll see amazing economic gains over time leaving your people to their own pursuits. I regard our challenge right now, as being to sustain this tight labor market as long as possible to push beyond mere recovery and into fundamental generational improvement for everyone (everything from the median wage, to the median net wealth figures, to wages for blacks and hispanics, to what are considered minimum wage levels, and on to job benefits). The tight labor market, if sustained long enough, will claw back some of the share of profit toward labor, and I expect the wage & benefits increase over time can be considerable given the vast profit levels in corporate America today. Even if you held wages relatively steady and increased things like vacation time or maternity leave, it'd be quite an improvement.
What I gathered from this article is that there isn't enough interest in Maine made chocolate to cover decent wages. Ship production to China or Mexico like everyone else. America has become a globalist society, and that means there's no room for lower middle class jobs like the ones explored in this article.
If both unemployment were low and job satisfaction, it would seem to follow that opioid abuse would subside due to the fact most people use for escapism. Perhaps unemployment is low but with shit jobs and/or low pay, people are still miserable and going to use. The stat of low unemployment therefore maybe a pyrrhic victory.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] threadThe labor force participation rate describes how many people of working age are trying to work. 'NEET' stats remove from that number education or vocational training students.
And economists use multiple definitions of unemployment accounting for many different things. U3 is commonly cited, but misleading for this purpose. U4 captures people who want to work but assume it isn't available, U5 captures other unattached workers, and U6 even adds part time workers seeking full time work.
A nation's unemployment rate should be a reflection of the economy's ability to employ it's populace. Not how many people actively have jobs.
(Employed / seeking employment) is the U3 employment rate - it's a perfectly legitimate statistic for understanding how the job search is going. When economists want to count the temporarily discouaged, they use U4. And when they want to count those not working for other reasons, they use U5. It's annoying that we treat U3 as "the unemployment rate" for political discourse, but it's a perfectly reasonable metric for economic analysis, and I wish people would stop pretending it's some kind of trick.
I’ll tell you why – because it’s not true.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
U6 is: Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force
The national U6 right now is 9.2 (unadjusted).
[1]: http://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chart...
2. My biggest gripe is anyone with eyes knows certain sectors of the economy are doing well, but it's still dismal out there. So many union jobs were just obliterated.
3. That "abled bodied, but not working number" is so high. I believe it's higher than ever? Higher than when women had the luxury of staying home to raise their kids?
4. I constantly remember Janet Yellen commenting on that sticky unemployment number of people who just weren't working. Why? We all knew why.
5. Yes--some gave up, but so many of the jobs being are just aweful. Slick Tech firms getting desperate people to use their vechicle to carry the wealthy around, deliver their toys, and put their food on the doorstep. All Independent Contractors of course. Daddy needs to make his nut, and live like them? Be more foxy than the next guy, but talk a liberal game. And so many really lousy jobs. Jobs that immigrants are passing on.
So good luck America. This is the lovely new economy. The poor catering to the wealthy. Maybe it's always been this way, but in the past, it wasen't so noticeable. There was a time where being the cleverest rat wasen't cool. Now they put them on a stage?
I pity the day the the money runs dry in tech. I guess most of you will have a spare room to retreat to?
Big Head got elected because he said what everyone was seeing with their own eyes, especially in reguards to the horrid economy. Absolutely nothing has changed in 420 days. Nothing. If anything he's just making it worse.
What I find more depressing the wealthy have brainwashed people into thinking this is all just fine, and dandy.
Let's help out those poor people that country. "What you're better than them?" Being a American has always been about denial. That is what use to make living here feel like a dream. The dream is diluted, and their will never be a revolt.
Cheap tech, and a questionable educational system solved that minor worry that used to keep the wealthy boys on edge. "Just put a spin on the abuse. They won't notice. Even if they catch on, what power do they have?"
This measure was well under 7% at our last period of nearly full employment.
http://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate
Looking at specific dates, raw U-6 is .9 less than a year ago. Seasonally adjusted U-6 is a full point less than a year ago.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
That said, OP's complaint still applies for LFPR or NEET percentage, which as far as I know are moving opposite U3-6?
I agree, though, the U numbers are basically the definition of "fake news" from the standpoint of what you mentioned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment#United_States_Bur...
Before that it got below 8% in the late 1990s because of an extreme stock market bubble, which was fleeting to say the least.
Not very good comparisons frankly.
Maybe these people who haven't found work just don't want to make $15 an hr working as a store clerk.
I'm probably counted different now that my six months of unemployment have run out. I didn't necessarily 'turn down' work but I also didn't apply for jobs that would have me driving over an hour one way for $12-15 for what is supposed to be a somewhat experienced position (IT work w/ a lot of requirements). This is in LA so shit's already experience.
Right now, I could've been working two weeks ago if a recruiter had had their shit together (interviewed and got job four weeks ago; actual paperwork took two weeks; when I could've started, they found out their contract w/ company had expired).
It's very frustrating out here even having done the things the media bullhorn has said to do - work in tech, work in an office, etc etc.
What it tells you is (mostly) how much unemployment will be paid out and (to some extent) how available workers are.
Anyway, "healthy" unemployment rate is usually 4%-7%.
The "right" metric is "employment rate," which is not the inverse. This is just the people working out of the working age population. It doesn't care whether people are unemployed, unable to work, retired, students, stay at home parents... Just how many people work.
This is usually around 60%-70%.
...so obviously "unemployed" leaves out the vast majority of non workers.
If you want to compare one area to another, for example, compare employment rates. Worried about techno-"unemployment," monitor employment rates. Slower, steadier societal effects will show here.
https://data.oecd.org/emp/employment-rate.htm
With the growing class divide and inflation, how much does being employed matter if you need two or three jobs to get by?
That figure has climbed slightly year over year, from 7.980 million to 8.130 million. That might imply slight stress in the labor market, in terms of cost vs wages, but nothing significant yet. It also might indicate there are some good paying side jobs that have become available due to the labor scarcity and people are snapping them up to improve their financial situation. The coming year will be interesting, as to whether the much anticipated wage growth finally shows up, or whether we're trapped in a Japan debt box of perpetual low inflation and low wage growth despite very low unemployment.
Curious how they count it.
The BLS routinely polls for why as well. Typically it's about 1/3 say it's to earn more money, 1/3 say it's specifically to deal with debt, and ~15% will say it's for enjoyment (they like the second job).
Multi-job holding peaked (all-time high) in 1995 at around 6.8%.
Still not quite what the OP wants, I suspect. I think we means "how many people earn enough to live decently, but that's hard.
I might be a 20 to student in Paris living on €1,200, consider myself fairly well off. House-sharing, couch surfing holidays, €1 drinks every Tuesday ..student living.
A 40 yo might consider this a poverty income. "Getting by" generally seems objective enough at first glance (rent on basic accomodation, etc), but culture and expectations play a big role. Also expectations about the future and stuff.
Basically , it's complicated. ..and outside the scope of an "measure," imo.
I think it's more useful to construct a picture from several simpler, more objective sources. Add up "living costs" to get your "minimum decent living' and then see how many people/households/workers have that much income.
It's never gonna be a real measure though, because "decent living" depends on circumstances.
This isn't what I was getting at. Take for example university students. Their earning power is significantly smaller than more experienced people. They also tend to need a lot less money, because they're usually single, don't often have a mortgage, live in a small apartment or in their parent's house, etc.
Many students work part-time in a restaurant or similar. For them, this will probably be a "livable wage", whether because their needs are smaller as discussed, or because they're relying to some extent on their parents.
Take another person of the same age, but who has a family and no parents for support, and assume they earn the same. For them, this same wage is not livable.
How would you statistically separate these cases? I'm not saying there isn't a way, I'm just wondering what it is!
"A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation. Mr. Cantillon seems, upon this account, to suppose that the lowest species of common labourers must everywhere earn at least double their own maintenance, in order that one with another they may be enabled to bring up two children; the labour of the wife, on account of her necessary attendance on the children, being supposed no more than sufficient to provide for herself. But one half the children born, it is computed, die before the age of manhood. The poorest labourers, therefore, according to this account, must, one with another, attempt to rear at least four children, in order that two may have an equal chance of living to that age. But the necessary maintenance of four children, it is supposed, may be nearly equal to that of one man. The labour of an able-bodied slave, the same author adds, is computed to be worth double his maintenance; and that of the meanest labourer, he thinks, cannot be worth less than that of an ablebodied slave. Thus far at least seems certain, that, in order to bring up a family, the labour of the husband and wife together must, even in the lowest species of common labour, be able to earn something more than what is precisely necessary for their own maintenance; but in what proportion, whether in that above mentioned, or in any other, I shall not take upon me to determine."
Oh, silly me, Adam Smith, again. Wealth of Nations.
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_...
There's a further bit on socially-determined necessities, beginning at:
"By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without...."
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_...
I'm certain there are some rather rich people who average over 50 hours a week, but its a starting point.
(those studies will often separate earned income from other income, so they do measure the impact of employment)
So employment churn is at historically low rates really. And this is good exactly why? Especially since the population to employment ratio hasn't changed at all since the great recession. This means you have a very non dynamic employment situation going on. That's actually not good and the Fed's preferred fix, having businesses fire a few percent of the workforce isn't a fix at all.
But for that, why not measure that directly, or churn directly.
This is not accurate. Almost the opposite is true. More people switch jobs when unemployment is low.
> So employment churn is at historically low rates really.
This is also not accurate. The US government measures job churn---it is called the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS)---and it is as high as it has ever been.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/job-openings-and-labor-turnover/o...
However, wages are starting to stagnate. It could actually be one of the reasons we are getting such high employment. The feedback loop will stop. We as a society will need to decide what to do when it no longer makes sense to employ most people.
You can almost trace it back to when Volcker broke the back of inflation.
That's one thing that makes the current posture of the Fed pretty interesting.
In other words, total comp is going up, but much of it is being funneled towards ever more expensive healthcare.
However, for business, the cost is just as real as giving employees a higher salary.
That being said, it ends up as a tax on dual income households, I don't get paid more if I opt out of my employer's health insurance even though it saves them a significant amount of money (~$5,000 a year). That's at the employer's discretion but in my experience most employers don't come close to matching compensation.
Um, that feedback loop existed until 1972 or so, but has not existed since then. For most people in the United States, it has never existed in their lifetime.
https://cdn.technologyreview.com/i/legacy/graph1.png?sw=600
And what's happening with home ownership and real estate prices across the nation? For example, my development has 115 homes. Zero are for sale, and the last sale was nearly 1 year ago. There is no inventory.
Does it constitute a virtuous cycle for the economy? Next up, inflation and increasing interest rates as the fed works to keep the economy from overheating.
It hit 155.2 million in February. The highest number of people that have ever been employed in US history.
By comparison, that number was 143 million just five years ago. The prior peak before the great recession ten years ago, was 146 million.
It's not the record for labor force participation rate obviously. That will never be hit again, thanks to the US aging.
Maybe, but not necessarily. The Labor force is defined as those of "working age", so if they age out of the tracked range, then they no longer accounted for in the labor force participation rate calculation.
There may be a general population participation rate (not sure if I have the right term here) for which your comment could be projected if current demographic trends hold, but that can be shifted by things like shifting immigration or fertility rate trends.
This was a big headline the other day:
"People over 65 years old would outnumber children by 2035, a first in U.S. history, according to updated projections released by the Census Bureau on Tuesday."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/elderly-in-u-s-are-projected-to...
As long as the US continues to maintain a comparative advantage in certain industries (e.g. software) I see no reason why they will be immune to wage inflation either. In fact this is arguably already occurring
?Downvoting for the truth?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...
General homelessness was 5,376 in 2000. It was 6,248 in 2005. It was 6,686 in 2015.
SF is doing an extraordinarily poor job of managing its homelessness, despite their affluence and vast resources. That's the fundamental problem.
Michael Lebowitz: "So explain why monetary policy is still in emergency mode. Funds at 1.25-1.50 and over $4 trln balance sheet."
Kashkari: "I thought the "tongue-in-cheekiness" of my tweet would be obvious. Allow me to translate: We keep saying we are at max employment and then all these people choose to work. It suggests we weren't really at max employment."
Reggie Palatty: "Dude I loved you in the Mummy Returns"
Kashkari: "I was better in the original"
https://twitter.com/neelkashkari/status/972142317162369024
To take a step back, the official unemployment # is only important in so far as its in the Federal Reserve's dual mandate to maximize employment while keeping inflation steady and moderate. Kashkari's comments suggest that we haven't hit max employment, and that not even high ranking members of the Fed have a firm grasp on what "max employment" looks like in the contemporary economy.
Fed wants to wait until we hit "max employment" to begin normalizing, which is akin to pumping the economic brakes. Normalizing = raising interest rates + removing bank liquidity = increasing cost and friction of borrowing/loaning = slows down economic activity.
The real question remains: how will employment and the overall economy change when the Fed starts to normalize interest rates and reduce the securities holdings from QE on its balance sheet. In theory it should reduce the rate of job creation.
More info on normalization here: https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/policy-normali...
Neither of those assertions is either in the article, or supported by fact. The vast majority of workforce members are employed and live well above the poverty line.
I truly don't understand why there seems to be a belief that every single job that exists should provide a 'living wage'. There is such as thing as a starter job, and there types of jobs that don't provide 25-50K/yr in value to either the employer or market. It's just not reasonable to presume (or enforce a policy such ) that any amount or type of work a business owner needs done should automatically result in the employee being completely taken care of.
"Unemployment" has been such a gamed term, especially since the Great Recession (at least, from my current perspective), that someone would have to argue me back to believing, to any significant degree, the numbers they are posting and stories they are telling about same.
For example, a common criticism about the US employment picture, on sites such as zerohedge, is to claim that it's all part time work. We have these numbers however, so there's no need to speculate.
Part-time workers as a percent of the total employed, is at the same level it was in 1999. Around 17.7%. That rate continued to move lower until mid 2000, when it hit around 16.7% before the recession.
Employment for 27 weeks or longer (1/2 year or longer), is back to a healthy level, where it was during the good times in 2005-2006 and matching 1996-1997. Employment for the other duration periods has seen a similar recovery.
The long-term unemployed as a percentage of the total unemployed, is back to 1995 and 2005 levels.
All the more impressive, these vast improvements are coming down off of an extreme hammer to the labor market from the great recession. The ~2001-02 recession was a blip by comparison, and yet the labor market has managed to get back to what would be considered healthy numbers in both the mid 1990s and mid 2000s. In fact, compared to the 1970s and 1980s, current numbers would be considered amazing.
And further to the positive side, the benefits of this labor improvement have been entirely wide-spread. Black, white, asian, hispanic, everyone is seeing a labor boom.
https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cps_charts.pdf
As an aside, politically, I'm entirely unwilling to credit this to the last year. My own prior reading (ok, mostly of news articles, albeit reasonably well-informed ones), described such effects as typically being a minimum of a year out from policy initiatives. 18 months being a more typical minimum.
The Great Recession hit me hard, and I've not seen the bounce back. Nor have others I know in my age bracket (later middle-age). That may color my perspective.
The country spent years digging out from the last financial disaster. And not the messaging seems to be, if you didn't grab as much as you could, it's your own fault.
P.S. And I do recall, a few years ago, the emphasis upon short term unemployment rates, avoiding discussion of the long-term unemployed and those who'd, from the perspective of the parameters of the statistical exercise, exited the labor market.
Thank you for addressing that to some extent. I do wonder, though, within specific demographics, what the levels of such may continue to be.
Have an upvote. I'm not complaining about your response -- to be clear. :-)
I'm in full agreement with that. This is a multi-stage procession of factors stretching back to 2010-2011. Economies, left well enough to their own and barring any extreme events, tend to improve/recover naturally.
I also think we're going to need more time to fully recover from the severe damage that occurred during the great recession. The complex effects and suffering of that kind of hit are well beyond the headline numbers and should be expected to take many years to heal. Economists are puzzled by wage growth not being higher (eg 3.5% vs 2.5% or similar) based on where unemployment is at - I think it's because we've only just got back to something close to a healthy labor market, whereas they think we're in the midst of something a notch or two higher than that already. To recover from economic trauma, it's not enough to just return to former headline numbers, you actually have to recover from the psychology damage (as is well known the great depression, which was of course even worse, left people traumatized for life). People behave differently after that kind of trauma, they make different choices, they fear risk more (which can lead to job stagnation, or fear to pursue better opportunities etc), and so on.
Trump may or may not unleash some so called animal spirits, in his rah rah behavior and policies (and or harm as much, from strategically poor thinking on trade), however the economy was grinding this direction likely regardless of anything the President might do. Very generally speaking, outside of insane policy settings (eg a corporate tax rate at 70%), if you manage to not upset/crash an economy for an extended period of time, and otherwise maintain a reasonable playing field, you'll see amazing economic gains over time leaving your people to their own pursuits. I regard our challenge right now, as being to sustain this tight labor market as long as possible to push beyond mere recovery and into fundamental generational improvement for everyone (everything from the median wage, to the median net wealth figures, to wages for blacks and hispanics, to what are considered minimum wage levels, and on to job benefits). The tight labor market, if sustained long enough, will claw back some of the share of profit toward labor, and I expect the wage & benefits increase over time can be considerable given the vast profit levels in corporate America today. Even if you held wages relatively steady and increased things like vacation time or maternity leave, it'd be quite an improvement.