Jobless Claims Rise by 13,000 to 242,000 | Hacker News Reader

Jobless Claims Rise by 13,000 to 242,000

usnews.com

39 pointsmennaali17 comments

I guess they have been “freed”. Following recent trends in logic, this should be good for society because they can do other things now.

> because they can do other things now.

Like look for another job?

Well they certainly won’t upskill as higher paying jobs are about to be “freed” as well.

For me this was the case: since quitting my job my depression has lifted and I'm about to launch my own company.

Good for you, but we need to be considerate to the 99% that dont have that option.

I was one of those "freed". A few months ago. I sent my resume around, I talked with a lot of recruiters, I got four interviews. One went well, but it was crypto-related and it's my personal preference to not touch crypto with a pole. One went unexpectedly bad, one went very well, but the ultimate decision maker decided to not hire me, and one turned into an offer. Today I finished my third week with my new employer. Happier than ever in my life (jobwise speaking).

Since when did everyone start thinking that a job is a god given right? Just like you can quit an employer, it's just fair that an employer can cut you. Just like I want to make money in life, and I shop around for the best deal, firms also want to make money, and they should shop around for those workers who give them the best bang for the buck.

In my previous job, I was not the guy who was giving the firm the best bang for the buck, it appears. They let me go, but they treated me reasonably well (for example they did not void my unvested RSU's). What more can I wish for? I feel no resentments.

But, I'm close to 50. Maybe the younger generation thinks differently.

Yeah! People don't deserve to not starve to death! Nobody needs shelter or happiness: those are frivolous desires of the flesh and should be forgone for the sake of profit. All hail the magic rising number.

Seriously though, your experience is not the norm. Not even close.

Why would people starve to death? There are unemployment benefits. If you think they are not enough, that's the state's problem to solve, not the private sector's one.

"lowest unemployment in history"

It literally is in the USA [0].

The economy also added 253,000 jobs last quarter.

[0] https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une...

congrats to the economy I guess

hardly. It's obvious from the tech layoffs and the number of fast-food restaurants near me with "Help Wanted" signs that the jobs being lost =/= the jobs added.

Fast-food restaurants have 'help wanted' signs everywhere specifically because people keep getting better jobs elsewhere. It's the same reason chains like McDonald's have been aggressively raising wages compared to what they were even five years ago.

Does this account for all the people who were unemployed more than 6 months ago or does the government continue to disregard these people in their numbers?

It's very easy to find out exactly what these statistics mean.

There's a saying, it's a recession when my neighbor gets fired and the depression when I do.

Tech is struggling mostly do to terrible management and short-term stock price juicing, not structural things.

Here are the 6 different ways that the BLS counts unemployment: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

More about how U1 to U6 are defined: https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm

It doesn't matter. All that matters is that you compare the same level of unemployment historically. Including more groups in the umemployment number doesn't do anything other than scale & stretch the value. The trends largely stay the same, but the values are shifted up or down, and the "waves" move at slightly different rates

The reason for using the U3 number is because it is a good snapshot into what is happening now and it's where the bulk of the movement is. It doesn't really matter if someone reports unemployment going from 9.2% to 6% vs 6% to 3%. That extra 0.2% comes from "long tail" of the unemployed.

You can plot the different unemployment levels on the BLS website to build an intuition for why it doesn't really matter which figure is reported on, just that figures are compared against their same level.

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