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Comment by TomMckenny | Hacker News Reader

Are prisoners counted as unemployed? Are they employed when assigned to "penal servitude"?

The are at several other reason US unemployment numbers are lower: they have different percentages in prison and, on the opposite side, nonstandard employment like the military. They have more clout to enforce favorable trade agreements. The numbers are calculated differently.

There maybe a difference in real employment numbers but these are not the figures and the conjectural cause for this unknown difference is just a conjecture.

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Prisoners aren't counted at all---not even as "not in the labor force" [0]. The employment statistics are based on the civilian non-institutional population, and prisoners are institutionalized.

[0] https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#concepts

Is "not in the labor force" the right category? Treating it that way will reduce unemployment numbers by reducing the counted population.

No matter what category you put these groups in, you will have an uncomfortable discrepancy similar, although to a lesser degree, of comparing apples to oranges. This is because prisoners are not identical with non-exsistant people nor are they identical to employed people.

Additionally, since military is considered employment, Europeans could boost employment just by expanding their military: as if unemployment is caused by a small military. I sense this is not the conclusion the authors would like.

So I too will bet that 10 years from now, European unemployment numbers will be higher than the US. My explanation: the counting techniques, prison ratios, relative world influence, military sizes as well as greater employment security will remain about the same.

Governments have a vested interest in keeping the numbers low. Right now people who don't want a job (e.g. stay-at-home-parents) aren't in the workforce. Also it's counting jobs vs people in the labor force. Meaning if someone has 2 jobs, there's really also an extra unemployed person. Also 1h/week counts as a job.

Without those modifications US unemployment is over 10%, EU unemployment well in the 20% even in the Netherlands.

An even fairer measure would be "active population" which is number of people working on jobs divided by the full population. Of course at that point babies and comatose patients count as unemployed, but I think it's fair because it correctly points out that the employed have to pay (in work, not money) for the entire population.

At that point US is high 30% unemployed, EU low 40% (about a 5% difference).

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