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Comment by lukeschlather | Hacker News Reader

> The unemployment rate has also become less meaningful than it once was. In recent decades, the number of idle working-age adults has surged.

This is a pretty significant error in the article. The Brookings blog post specifically talks about men rather than adults. U6 unemployment is has fallen to the same level it was prior to the dot-com crash.

There's a solid argument that looking at U3 rather than U6 understated the severity of the great recession, but by any sort of unemployment metric the great recession is over.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/08/15/men-not-a...

https://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate

The Brookings blog post also makes no attempt to compare unemployment/marriage rates among men and women, so its entire tone is severely misleading since it's basically trying to paint a simple equalizaton between women and men as a crisis.

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I'd goal shift at this point and argue unemployment isn't as useful an indication anymore. I'd say underemployment and wage growth are better indicators of the economy. It's great people are working again, but if those people are working at jobs they are overqualified for or working at jobs that refuse to pay them enough to live, I'm not sure that's useful.

>a simple equalizaton between women and men as a crisis.

Going from 100/0 to 50/50 is a crisis, for at least 25% of the population.

I think this is the wrong way to look at it. It was never actually 100/0. Homemakers did (and still do) a large amount of informal and uncompensated labor that doesn't show up in the employment statistics. In essence, employees used to be paid wages that allowed them to cover their living expenses with enough left over to pay for a full-time live-in nanny/chef/housekeeper/social secretary/etc. (in the form of their spouses).

We're moving to a world where it's more acceptable for men to choose to be homemakers and more common for women to have professions other than homemakers, both of which are good. But we've also moved from a world where the typical family had one income and one adult's full-time labor to support the household to a world where the typical family has two incomes and zero adult's full-time support without an equivalent jump in standard of living that would allow them to comfortably hire out for all the previously uncompensated labor.

In other words, typical working age adults used to only have one full-time job (as either a homemaker or a member of the formal labor force). Now adults of both genders have a full-time formal job plus a part-time job maintaining the household but without the equivalent real income increase that would imply. That's the crisis.

Not to mention that it was never 100/0 even for non-homemaker work. Lots of working class and lower middle class women worked outside the home even in the imaginary golden age of the 1950s.

>Now adults of both genders have a full-time formal job

That would require a doubling of how much work needs to be done - while possible, that's not what the grandparent was hypothesizing. Unless exactly 50% of the population wants to be homemakers, there's going to be a problem for the people who used to have a job but now don't. So, whether or not 100/0 --> 50/50 is happening, it would be a crisis for 25% if it did.

Hello, fellow Luke.

I agree that the "men not working" vs unofficial unemployment rate isn't that's helpful, but mostly because the official unemployment rate has become such a silly metric, as outlined in this (old) article from Harper's: https://harpers.org/archive/2008/05/numbers-racket/

The Harper's article may be same-song-second-verse after reading your links and the parent article, but when I read it ten years ago it made a strong enough impression on me that I remember it now.

Thanks for the macrotrends link.

this whole article is purely leading the charge for how Democrats are going to down play the increase in market, lower jobless numbers especially among minorities, and reports of general good will in the small business area.

Schumer only recently decided he wanted GPD reported differently for the same reason politicians always want to change the measuring stick, because current numbers don't support the message they want the public to hear.

It is very evident we are going to get swamped with all sorts of "new economics" and "fair economics" stories leading up to 2018 because the current numbers being reported look that good. The key is filtering this political campaign driven noise.

It will be tough for Democrats to shift the narrative that way. Trump voters are not the people who would give very much attention to some new macroeconomic indicators promoted by MSNBC telling them the economy is actually in a bad shape despite the fact they are doing very well.

==the current numbers being reported look that good.==

Real wage, laborforce participation and deficit numbers disagree.

This, 100%. Also, any article that brings up the rise of far-right political parties in Europe without mentioning the migrant crisis is pure-partisan-political drivel. Whatever, so it goes.

The article's argument is that the numbers commonly used do not reflect reality accurately anymore. And your response doesn't engage with the specifics of what the authors says is going on, instead you respond "la la la la, I can't hear you, it's all just spin, la la la".

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