Comment by gortok | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gortok | Hacker News Reader

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The US is closing in on "Full Employment", if by Full Employment, you mean:

January 2008 Labor Participation Rate: 66.2% July 2016 Labor Participation Rate: 62.7%

62.7% participation means 94 Million Americans are not working. (Source: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/labor-force-...)

Full Employment only calculates people who are actively looking for work; anyone else is not part of that calculation.

To make an easier example, if 20 people are in a room, and 9 say "I'm employed", 1 says "I'm looking for work", and the other 10 say "I've been out of work for so long I'm not even looking), then that means:

90% employment (10% unemployment rate); but the labor force participation rate is only 50%.

Add another 5 people people to the mix (people that recently turned 18), and suddenly you have full employment, even if you have 10 of those 25 not looking for work or unable to work.

So to say "The US has an OK recovery and is closing in on Full employment" is an empty saying because you can have statistical full employment and have half of the population not holding a job.

Economists have reasons for measuring the way they do, it's not some evil conspiracy or something, the EU measures unemployment similarly. Labor participation rate is complicated by the retiring of the baby boomers so it's hard to use it as an indicator of labor utilization. The measure you would want to look at is BLS's U-6 which includes the normal U-3 unemployment definition and adds "Discouraged" and part time workers that would like to work more. If you look up U-6 you'll see that it's getting back down to pre-recession levels.

In any case, the point is that the US has recovered better then the EU and that is true no matter which numbers you look at.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State... 27.1% of the US is under 21 and 14.5% is over 65. I know 16 should be working but a good chunk should be getting education. That leaves only 58.4% even eligible for labor participation.

this x2

we are at full employment and those statements about only 62% employment might need to be looked at in more detail, they are wildly inaccurate when looking at the big picture, I am astounded this is even considered as reality.

how many families have both parents working if there are two in a house?

those numbers are based on use of welfare and unemployment. if those statements were alarming the people that are homeless would be astronomical at the moment.

http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/p...

According to this[1] only 16+ year olds are counted for the purposes of determining labor force participation.

[1] http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

What do you mean "eligible". Are people over 65 somehow not eligible to work that you exclude them from the LFPR?

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNU02000097

9 million workers 65+ would be very interested in how they're not eligible to be a part of the labor force.

The BLS only counts the people who aren't in prison, and are over 16 as the Labor Force participation rate. You aren't counted if you are thought of by employers as too young or too old to work; so there are a substantial number of seniors who aren't counted because they aren't in the labor force according to the BLS.

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm

> Employers think they are too young or too old,

The DoL counts Discouraged Workers, which is a better way of assessing what you're talking about than teasing it out of the participation rate. It also counts those who are part-time involuntarily, which I feel is pretty important.

There are 6 unemployment rates with different categories included and excluded.

(On mobile, or I would link a BLS report).

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