What We Know About the 92M Americans Who Aren’t in the Labor Force
blogs.wsj.com
blogs.wsj.com
Part of this is an intentional misrepresentation of the employment numbers. In order to be counted as "unemployed" you must first have had stable "employment". Thus, people just out of high school or college that are unable to find their first job (which is often extremely hard to come by) are not counted as unemployed, despite being so. The other problem is that after unemployment benefits expire, people aren't counted as unemployed anymore, so the unemployment stat goes down, but the percentage not in the labor force goes up.
Employment indicators U3/U6 are remarkably poor for depicting gainful employment in the wake of economic depressions; they're meant to measure unemployment that is expected to be transient. Super long-term unemployment, difficulty finding a first job, and underemployment are not adequately measured, though the part-time employment stat is somewhat taken into account.
Does anyone on HN have suggestions of possible explanations for some of that percentage? I don't understand it. Is it people who wanted a job, but gave up looking? Other situations that would fall into this category other than simply "lazy"?
I have two adult sons who have never had jobs. They also look hail and hardy. They both have some issues. We are still trying to work out how they can make money in spite of being basically unemployable.
I suspect this happens more than is recognized. My handicap was not identified until age 35. I got called "lazy" a lot until I had a diagnosis. I am a woman and was fortunate to be able to hide out for many years behind the title of full time wife and mom.
Twice exceptional individuals very often have seemingly "average" performance outcomes and the degree to which it tortures them to just achieve "average" goes largely unnoticed by people who presume them to have an excess of ego for thinking they deserve something better in life.
No, but when someone alludes to something without saying what it is, curiosity is aroused in people.
I am however trying to create my own future as an entrepreneur and build my own company. This effort being bootstrapped, on my own dime, using funds that should have been reserved for retirement. There is a lot of solid engineering talent and experience that is laying dormant - I am trying to counter that by building my own asset/company.
The company will eat itself to death, but that will take years, and you'll have left to do the same to other companies, using your "success" at this one to prove you need an insane salary at the new one. Repeat, over and over.
Unfortunately a large part of their business model relies on fulfilling their commitment to seat engineers on programs as promised in the contract they signed with their customer, i.e., the USG. Filling seats is more important than achieving quality engineering outcomes. There are three big-time losers in that equation: [1] the taxpayer, [2] the "lifer" employee, and [3] the warfighter.
Also, the industry has a lot's of ups and down and far more recent grads than available positions.
"...while the elderly workers in the US have risen by a whopping 7.4 million since the start of the Depression in December 2007, workers aged 25-54 are down 4 million!"
As shown in this chart:
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/im...
If there's a person here with a good handle on how the WSJ article and the noted Zero Hedge article relate to one another, I'd be very interested in your perspective.
[1] Article source, August 2015. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-07/prime-aged-workers-...
As for my future, I am trying to create my own asset/company and I don't see myself reentering the workforce as an hourly wage earner again.
I'm doing my best to prepare for my own future (as one of those laid off early) by learning software development to supplement my systems engineering skill from aerospace. I do not forsee myself becoming a barrista.
The graph should be split:
- Has a reliable full time job with benefits
- Has a minimum wage job, or is a part time employee/contractor making less than $20-30k a year.
Part-time for economic reasons (6 million)
Slack work or business conditions (3.6 million)
Could only find part-time work (2.1 million)
Other (0.3 million)
Part-time for noneconomic reasons (20 million)
That's better than I expected.
[1]: (6036) / (2357 + 146464 + 19656) [2]: (6036 + 8357 + 820) / (2357 + 146464 + 19656)
Let me explain. Ultimately, how much money the workforce is making matters to consumer spending. People may be ok not having a job, because they have some way to stay at their standard of living. But unless a bunch of them are sitting on family trusts, it also means they don't have a growing amount of money to spend.
Yet consumer spending has been growing steadily for the last 5 years. How can that be? The likely scenario is really cheap debt. The kind that disappears when interet rates aren't basically zero anymore.
We've shoved a lot of stuff under the "free money" carpet. When the Fed bumps up the interest rates, all those spiders are going to come out to play.
I would think the interest rates going up would actually encourage people to save more.
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
It doesn't matter if there are investors or a profit.
Just eyball the proportion of working adults in the 50 to 60 year range. It is only ~5x the number of disabled. In other words, that is a huge %--maybe 20%--of potential workers in that age bracket.
Any employment process that disables 20% of its workforce would be normally considered a problem.
But instead we call the un-employable 'diabled', to sweep the data under the rug.
It almost certainly helps keep other people in their jobs, tho (like burecrats and academics).
Correct. This is the legacy of the Clinton era 'welfare to work' program: we moved people from welfare to disability.
This will grow as automation takes hold of ever more industries. "Disability" is the U.S.'s first step toward guaranteed minimum income or a negative income tax. We will never have enough jobs for everyone in America, so we need to figure out what we're going to do to keep the economy going.
Not sure what you mean. When we give poor people money, they spend it. That's good for the economy. Welfare and disability are definitely good things.
That includes "taking care of elderly" as well as "taking care of kids". Especially the "taking care of elderly" is putting a very large drain on resources that is simply going to get worse and worse as the boomers age.
I wonder how they are clustered geographically.
So it's not newsworthy when taken as a statistic, but you can find that the problem and its societal and human costs definitely are. If your bubble is big enough to keep you insulated from all this, then good for you.
If you look at the SSDI stats: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/dibStat.html it is interesting to see that when the Financial Crisis happened, the number of applicants jumped drastically; a 34% increase from 2007 to 2009. And as the economy has picked up recently, the number of applications has gone down; a 15% drop from 2010 to 2014.
While I do support the idea of a "safety net", I don't like the idea of people dipping into SSDI when they don't feel like working (or can't get work).
Added later: (1330PST): A lot of people are saying that he could just be having a good day or two. Maybe; but he has enough good days (when I see him), there's no reason that he would not work on his "good days". Secondly: my last conversation with him (3-4 weeks ago) was about how he could go about getting a cash-only gig, and he wanted my opinion (me being a tech guy). I recommended Postmates/TaskRabbit, but he shied away from those, opting for cash gigs from Craigslist. Maybe the 1099 would have ratted him out? I dunno.
Also, to take a very personal example, I've also got a neurological condition (not MS) that is fairly episodic. I'm fortunate that I'm have got a desk job as a software developer and so I haven't had to seek disability (despite being told by my physician he'd support an application). If I had to work going physical labor, I wouldn't have a choice but to apply for disability, since when my condition flares up I'm fairly immobile. Even walking short distances is difficult. There's simply no way I could hold down a 5 day/week physical labor job.
That said, when things are going well, I can be fairly active. Today I was out working on my deck. I take my kids to the zoo and walk around the entire park. If I had had to take disability, would people say the same things of me?
My mother is 58. Her lower spinal column was collapsed, and she's had it reconstructed using titanium plates and screws during a 6 hour surgery. She has been denied for disability by the Social Security Administration twice, and currently has to wait ~500 days for her next appeal (https://www.ssa.gov/appeals/DataSets/01_NetStat_Report.html) in front of an panel of judges (this backlog is caused by Congress providing insufficient funding to process said backlog).
How the hell are people who don't need disability getting approved, and the people who don't need it are stuck in purgatory?
It started as periodic attacks in his late 30s, where for anywhere from a day at a time, to about a week at a time, he'd have significant difficulty getting out of bed and moving around (and definitely couldn't drive). But then he could go for weeks at a time being totally fine; usually about 4-6 weeks, and in one case a full 6 months. This already started making it hard to keep employment, though, since employers tend not to like random unscheduled absences that are likely to continue indefinitely into the future (even if they understand the reason). Fortunately, he was a lawyer, which is an area where at the time it was relatively easy to find flexible part-time work. That worked ok for a number of years. Once the attacks got more frequent though, even this no longer worked out. Also he was no longer able to maintain a driver's license. So by his mid-40s he went on disability, even though he was still ok probably 50% of the time. He would definitely have preferred to keep working in some capacity if it were possible, because it gave him something to do, and even his previous part-time job paid more than the $700/mo disability gave. By his late 40s he definitely couldn't work in any capacity (started having mental issues in addition to physical ones, and full-time physical ones), but there's a few years there where it seemed unfortunate that we don't have a way to better accommodate people who are somewhat but not really fully able to work.
From what I gather, since there has been a larger number of people filing for disability, they are automatically rejecting applicants several times hoping that they will get a job (if they really don't need the disability). Then, if you make it to the court date, that itself is evidence that you are disabled enough.
Now I don't agree with this, but apparently this is the way they are running the program now.
This disgusts me on a level I can't even describe. My mother is lucky: I live a modest life, combined with a tech worker salary, means I can support her without any impact to either of us. Without my job though, she would be homeless.
Because bureaucracy basically guarantees this exact injustice will occur.
What is particularly distressing about this phenomenon is that the people on disability are discouraged from looking from insecure jobs, because disability benefits are a guaranteed long term income stream which is forfeit in perpetuity upon employment. It is clear that many of the people receiving these government benefits understand the system quite well, as a substantial portion of them are working off the books, to get extra income while avoiding loss of long term benefits.
The fact that the SSDI stats jumped during the financial crisis shows that people aren't applying just because they're lazy and don't want to work. They're applying because the work isn't there, otherwise the numbers would have already been just as high before the crisis.
You also have to consider that a lot of these people may be legitimately "too disabled to work" during a job shortage but be fine when there is more demand for workers. When employers are desperate for workers, they're willing to make more accommodations than they would when there are hundreds of applicants per opening. MS is a great example of this because its symptoms are so variable from day to day. My mom has had MS since before I was born and she's been able to find part-time work when the economy is doing good because some employers are willing to accept that she needs to work shorter shifts, take longer breaks and will call in sick more often. During harder times she's outcompeted by applicants who don't have these issues. It's very possible your neighbor is only capable of lifting 100lb stones 2 or 3 days of the week. Hard to find stable work that way.
Being able to quit my corporate job has allowed me to get healthier and a lot of people would be surprised to find I am handicapped. I mostly walk everywhere and can walk for hours at a time. I also have days when I fall down because I am extremely neurologically impaired, when I have blinding pain accompanied by profuse vomiting and so on.
Being able to quit working can make a handicapped person genuinely more functional. But that doesn't mean they are employable and it doesn't mean the performance you see and judge as evidence of being "able bodied" really adds up to employability.
In other words, he can lift 100 lb stones because he does it when he damn well feels like it, on a good day, at a time of his choosing, under circumstances of his arranging -- none of which applies to typical working conditions.
"I know one guy who is potentially abusing disability. I have seen him on ones of occasions do something that makes me think he should be working."
To the moral question of the safety net: is it just for one to have earned X dollars (and spent Y amount of one's life) working at a job, only to have the fruits of one's labor forcefully taken away to fund his neighbor's welfare/housing/food/schooling/etc.? I would argue no.[0] If someone is disabled or destitute, he can appeal to the charity of his family members, fellow human beings, or philanthropy to help him out. There are plenty of people (many on these boards, I imagine) who have excess resources and would surely help a starving man in the street or an orphan.
Indeed, voluntary aid would fix the issue of worthiness which you raise: if you are worthy of help, you will be judged worthy to receive it. (Charities and mutual aid societies have existed since at least the 19th century, and have proliferated even more-widely since.[1]) If not, time to start providing value to others (i.e., labor) and receiving money in exchange. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
[0] http://philo.abhinav.ac.in/Objectivism/Ayn%20Rand%20-%20The%...
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/objectivist/2011/11/18/america-b...
Yeah, screw him for living life to the fullest while he still can, instead of continuing heavy physical labor every day until he's in a wheelchair.
In all seriousness, it's not like disease is completely black & white and there's always an obvious day up until which you can easily work. Just the mental & emotional drain of coping with something like this must make it incredibly difficult to get up every day and get excited about working.
If our economy can't provide a safety net for people in tough in-between situations like this, then let's make our systems more efficient rather than force a bunch of people to do something they don't feel up for just because it's a job.
Of course patient survey's don't help this at all. I do know my doctor will rarely if ever raise the notion that a patient's weight is the cause of their problems, from bad back, weak joints, pain in walking, or diabetes. Why? Surveys. You get whacked more than a few times and suddenly its not worth the frustration. Sadly there are movements that are pushing for acceptance. I wonder how many other shake their head in annoyance at all the obese who have stickers and park up front at the store? Its like ready content for people of wal mart.
As for the SSDI, there are so many cases of fraud and its not uncommon to read about some disability mill getting caught and having to pay out. However you won't see many of those receiving their SSDI losing it. Its even worse when just you can make believe a mental disability and get it. There was that famous case from 2011 where a guy was claiming disability, wearing diapers, having nurses attend, and more.