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Comment by mlillie | Hacker News Reader

Unemployment is at a record low. Workers are smart to organize and strike now, as it's a (labor) seller's market.

Unemployment isn't as low as you may think, the number reported only includes those still actively looking for work. Anyone who has given up on the prospect of finding a job won't be counted.

That said, unemployment _seems_ low, so it may add pressure to their strike.

You can find numbers for those here: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

They are all going down and have been almost constantly since 2008. It's at historic levels.

After 10 years of adjusting the measurement method, the number is finally going down.

Looking at this chart: https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/u-3-unemployment-rate-was-...

Seems like a constant decline so it's not sudden and very explainable.

Because not everyone who isn't looking for work wouldn't want it. Among those who aren't looking for work would be the retired, students, stay at home parents, the disabled, etc.

U6 unemployment is at its lowest level since 2001.

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE

Not to mention a lot of new "employment" is in the gig economy.

>Anyone who has given up on the prospect of finding a job won't be counted.

That's fine, it isn't like Companies are pounding on the door asking them to get back to work, so for the purposes of negotiating, the unemployment is low.

If you aren't actively looking for work and you don't have a job why should this count as unemployment? This means they aren't collecting unemployment from their state, correct? If they are disabled (mentally/physically) enough to not be able to work, that is another category.

Whenever I hear/read this type of reply my answer is: so what? Why should they be counted as unemployed when they clearly are able but just aren't actively looking.

If they aren't actively looking because they're taken care of by some other means and are content with their lives, that's one thing. If they aren't actively looking because they have given up hope of finding a job, and are seething with discontent, that's another thing. Depending on which thing, and how many people are feeling it, there may be nothing to worry about, or an incipient revolution. That's my answer for 'so what?'

Do you know about discouraged workers and how they're already taken into account by BLS? https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/discouraged_worker.asp

Yes. The BLS only looks at an estimate of their number, it doesn't examine their motives, circumstances, or level of discouragement. I seek to emphasize that all of those things matter.

I guess, also stay at home parents as well as baby boomers who got laid off and can maybe eek by til they collect retirement would be in this category too.

Just seems like an 'other' type of metric.

Because it depends on what you're really looking for. There are plenty of ways to opt out of the job market, most of which won't put you on the unemployment list. Unemployment rate matters if you're interested in how many people are in a particular, very specific, transition period between (legal) jobs. For this discussion, I suppose a better metric would be labour force participation rate.

Having observed the use of unemployment numbers for political reasons over the years, my opinion is that this "stopped actively looking" idea is used when there is not another valid criticism of the state of the economy available and the speaker still wishes to cast shade.

Ok, this seems plausible as to why that metric is counted by BLS separately. Politicians change unemployment coverage and stop counting people that move off unemployment funds to a different category, looks like they did something.

Without basic income guarantee it is never labor's market -- labor undersold = labor starves, labor underbought = capital experiences temporary inconvenience.

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