"By comparison, the October jobless rate stood at 6.9%, down from 14.7% in April as workers regained jobs or gave up searching for work."
I love how the hopeless are not counted as jobless.
I love how the hopeless are not counted as jobless.
It's important to understand that the value of the unemployment rate is not the absolute number but its change over time.
We also have other metrics published alongside the unemployment rate, like labor participation.
We all seem to be admitting that it's a bad, misleading statistic. So why are we so committed to keeping it around forever? Why not change the definition?
People say "for historical comparison", but what's the point of a historical comparison of a statistic that we all admit now is bad and misleading?
The fact that something has always been done a certain way is no justification for continuing to do it, especially if the initial decision was misguided in some way.
It's much more misleading to suggest that the people not included in the unemployment rate are the "hopeless" since it includes children, the retired, and those unable to work.
Another route, similar to the one in this study, may be considering people who are actively searching for work and where the household income is below a certain threshold (likely based upon the composition of the family).
The country is not monolithic. It could be considered typical, yet you might still have only 70% being two income households.
It would be silly to include the other 30% as unemployed.
That being said, "seeking employment" is likely one of the worse indications of unemployment. People may be excluded or impeded from joining the workforce for a variety of reasons and stop seeking employment because of that. It is a rather long list: discrimination (age, disability, gender, race), accommodations for disabilities, access to affordable childcare, criminal record, level of education. While some of those can be addressed, they rarely are addressed in a meaningful manner. In those cases I find it difficult to treat not-seeking employment as a choice.
The majority of what you term as “hopeless” is seniors that are let go and eventually decide to retire rather than entering the work force at wages less than they earned previously. It’s not a bunch of disillusioned 20 somethings giving up on life.
Source?
>Source?
assuming "long way from retirement" is 10+ years.
Discouraged over job prospects
age 24-55: 311k
age 55+: 170k
Discouraged workers are persons marginally attached to the labor force who did not actively look for work in the prior 4 weeks for reasons such as thinks no work available, could not find work, lacks schooling or training, employer thinks too young or old, and other types of discrimination.
Is it meaningless? Isn't it important to get as accurate an assessment as possible of the current situation? Arguably that's even more important than historical comparisons.
> The majority of what you term as “hopeless” is seniors that are let go and eventually decide to retire rather than entering the work force at wages less than they earned previously.
Is there a citation for this? Millions of people are newly out of work now as a result of pandemic-related shutdowns, so it seems highly unlikely that primarily seniors are affected by an inability to find work.
You need that historical baseline to assess the current situation.
To provide an extreme example, as extremes are often useful in illustrating failure cases, it would be trivial to say that the murder rate in the US has dropped by nigh-on 100%. Simply redefine "murder" to mean "persons killed by a woman wearing a blue hat on the third Tuesday of February".
But what if the historical baseline has always been misleading, and undercounting a problem?
> Simply redefine "murder" to mean "persons killed by a woman wearing a blue hat on the third Tuesday of February".
This isn't a useful example, because the point of redefining unemployment is to get a more accurate view of it, whereas this redefinition of murder gives a less accurate and completely pointless view of the problem.
Then you create a new metric, but keep the old one around for historical baselines.
By the way, this is what the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is doing with the various unemployment metrics.
> The point of redefining unemployment is to get a more accurate view of it, whereas this redefinition of murder gives a less accurate and completely pointless view of the problem.
I see you are new to politics.
Please refrain from violating the Hacker News Guidelines. Your comment is neither accurate nor appropriate.
It's not true. Discouraged workers is usually 2:1 for age <55 vs >55.
Usually the vast majority are not seniors. GP just made that up
You can check for yourself via blm:
“Regained jobs” or “gave up searching”.
One of those is good, one of those is bad. Seems like lazy reporting to just say “meh, one of those two”.
Click through all the links at the bottom of this report: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
That being said, the closest single metric to follow isn't any of the indices. Try prime age employment-population ratio.
The people in power always use the most optimistic measures and the people who want power always use the most pessimistic measures. I'd personally argue the more pessimistic measures are closer to reality, as would many others. BLS found a way to serve us and the people in power, simultaneously, without getting themselves replaced. They didn't just do an ultra-important, thankless job, they also found a way to square a political circle in order to do it. I have nothing but respect for them.