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Comment by anm89 | Hacker News Reader

This is a really interesting metric but I'm going to argue that it doesn't say that much about our current situation given that our current unemployment numbers are highly skewed due to a strong shift towards low quality part time work and a large number of people opting out of the labor search (who are not considered unemployed in these statistics).

I could see an argument made that given that this is statistic is relative to itself and just tracks movement it shouldn't matter if things are different now than in the past but it feels to me like the nature of this metric is so different now than it was in the past that it's just not an apples to apples comparison.

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You could use any of the BLS unemployment numbers in a metric line this to see if some of the others were better predictors historically (not sure why they didn’t document that).

If what you are saying is that we are in a historically unprecedented time you’ll note their metric predicted recessions that happened across a wide variety of historical regimes.

I do not have any real numbers, and this is just anecdotal, but in Slovenia (small EU country), a lot of our larger retailers have replaced some posters (basically ads) in their stores with "workers needed" posters, and some have literally advertised that they're looking for workers in their paper ads we get in the mail. Also a car repair shop literally had an radio ad that they're looking for repairmen.

It might be just a coincidence, but it's easy to get/change jobs at the moment, if you're actually willing to work.

My sister was working in those retail positions in Slovenia as late as 2 years ago. The pay is laughable (3eur/hour) and the working conditions are shit.

A promotion grants you a whopping 10cent rate increase. A whole 0.8 euro per day if you pass a test!! Oh and you don’t get more than 30 hours per week coz then they’d have to pay benefits.

No shit they have a hard time hiring. Most young people will rather try being an instagram influencer than work for those wages. Got nothing to lose at that point

https://jobs.aldi-hofer.com/hofer-kariera-si/job/1000-Ljublj...

They're offering 1.2*minimum wage for 30h/week.

For someone without any other qualifications, that's not bad.

I dont know where she worked, but most offer more. Ever barteding gets you 7+eur/h and tips in Ljubljana.

Probably a trick of being a student job. I didn’t dig too much and instead nudged her to spend time working on actual long term passions (personal training et al)

It is very similar in Germany. Many companies looking for more people. And it's not about highly educated positions, they are looking simply for young labor, there so many old people.

No single metric is going to give a full picture. However, to my understanding work force participation has been going up and there's been upward pressure on wages at the lower end.

Right, unemployment by itself means little unless you have the labor market participation rate for context.

Working age labor participation; there's a huge demographic shift in place towards old people across almost all first world countries. Not sure if they measure this at all, as the historic assumptions was that the distribution of population across age didn't vary much.

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