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Say Hello to Full Employment

theatlantic.com

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Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#31

Post by ryandrake »

ProAm wrote: post #2

The national unemployment rate has always been political fodder and not a good indicator to the heath of people employed. Statistical smoke and mirrors considering they do not count people who've stopped looking for work because they cannot find it, those who are under-employed, or those who are earning less this year compared to last due to inflation and wage stagnation.

You’re getting downvotes but it’s really difficult to take any report on employment seriously, since partisans are always bending definitions of things like “wants a job” and “has a job” to suit their narrative.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#32

Post by crb002 »

Des Moines resident. "Full" just means that the number of minimum wage jobs exceed the number of those unemployed. Software industry here is total crap. Only large tech employers are Principal, Wells Fargo, DuPont, John Deere.

Principal will tank when the market drops (company almost tracks large index funds), they have already hearded most employees into shared community desks like cattle with draconian policies against any personal items or even paper.

DuPont is about to be eaten alive by State funded Chinese seed corn.

John Deere is at an inflection point where they need massive RD spending in a bad economy. Either they ship autonomous bots for seed/weed/feed or they become a dinosaur.

Wells Fargo ... isn't exactly the most ethical corporation.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#33

Post by elvirs »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #21
aero142 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop getting your economics reports from political news sources. "They don't count people who've stopped looking" is not a meaningful statement. There are many statistics that report this. Labor force participation rate is the one I always look at next to unemployment rate and gives a better overall picture. https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 In this case, I think you make a valid point. Why is the labor for…

A large part is demographics, and the drop was known for decades before it happened, as mentioned in papers from Census. FRED reports also explain this. Another part is people staying in college longer (or going back to college) to get more education which is needed for a modern workforce, and the result of that is more lifetime earnings, not less. A third part is many people are opting for one income, since many cou…

>A third part is many people are opting for one income, since many couples can now live on one income."

I beg to differ, its quite the opposite actually. More people are in debt compared to past. Not sure if that's what you mean by 'climbing up'

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#34

Post by ProAm »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #18
ProAm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It helps that we've been at war for ~17 years straight and are still largely quantitatively easing things.

Wars don't tend to grow economies, and QE stopped in 2014.

QE stopped in 15, but the balance sheets were still full of them until the end of last year, we are just starting to get out of the effects of QE and to see how things will really look over the next few years [q] And war is very profitable and keeps money circulating, may not grow and economy but it will sure stabilize it while there are people to kill and things to break.

[q] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/24/the-fed-launched-qe-nine-yea...

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#35

Post by hexane360 »

civilian wrote: post #30
aero142 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop getting your economics reports from political news sources. "They don't count people who've stopped looking" is not a meaningful statement. There are many statistics that report this. Labor force participation rate is the one I always look at next to unemployment rate and gives a better overall picture. https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 In this case, I think you make a valid point. Why is the labor for…

Scott Alexander gets deep into labor force participation rate in those post (with lots of good charts!): http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/02/19/technological-unemploym... A sister-comment mentioned baby boomers-- there's a second index called prime age male labor force participation rate (PAMLFPR) that corrects for that by only looking at working-age men. We've gone down from 97% PAMLFPR in 1948 to 88% PAMLFPR in 2016.

Of course, I wonder if PAMLFPR is no longer a socially relevant statistic. After all, there are a lot more women in the workforce currently, and (slightly) more men staying home. It's not as good an indication of who really needs work as it once was.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#36

Post by elvirs »

wgerard wrote: post #11
ProAm wrote: post #2

The national unemployment rate has always been political fodder and not a good indicator to the heath of people employed. Statistical smoke and mirrors considering they do not count people who've stopped looking for work because they cannot find it, those who are under-employed, or those who are earning less this year compared to last due to inflation and wage stagnation.

> those who are earning less this year compared to last due to inflation and wage stagnation. The article discusses this briefly: > The trucking industry is instructive here: Trade groups have argued that it is facing a shortfall of 51,000 workers, yet businesses have not yet shown much willingness to cut hours, boost pay, and improve conditions to lure workers in. Indeed, across the economy, companies have shown a r…

one of the reasons for reluctance to boost pay could be the fact that profit margins of trucking companies have decreased in recent years despite increasing demand for their services. Also they have found a way to enable illegal immigrants to drive trucks which gives another source to companies to keep trucker wages low. I am an immigrant and know so many guys (from my country) who could not find any other job (because lack of paperwork) start driving trucks, mostly for Florida based companies.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#37

Post by jimmy1 »

crb002 wrote: post #32

Des Moines resident. "Full" just means that the number of minimum wage jobs exceed the number of those unemployed. Software industry here is total crap. Only large tech employers are Principal, Wells Fargo, DuPont, John Deere. Principal will tank when the market drops (company almost tracks large index funds), they have already hearded most employees into shared community desks like cattle with draconian policies aga…

> Only large tech employers are Principal, Wells Fargo, DuPont, John Deere.

Those are pretty impressive honestly.

Wells Fargo is 2008 Bank of America. They will do everything they can to improve their image -- good time to join actually, IMO.

DuPont will be fine. JD can become a dinosaur and still live another 50+ years on name alone.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#38

Post by tbirdz »

ryandrake wrote: post #23
wgerard wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> few people I know, even with high net worth and liquidity, have much of anything in a 'savings account' Really? It's fairly common advice to store an emergency fund in something akin to a savings account (or at least something with FDIC backing). Either way, it seems bizarre for a high net worth individual not to have at least $500 in something extremely liquid like a checking/savings account. Either way, it's fair…

> Really? It's fairly common advice to store an emergency fund in something akin to a savings account (or at least something with FDIC backing) That’s where I have my emergency fund (earning nearly zero interest of course). If OP knows of some other type of account with enough liquidity to use as an emergency fund AND generates significant interest, you have my full attention!

Check out online banks. My Ally Bank savings account offers 1.75% interest. Another option could be a CD ladder.

Some banks, like Ally, also offer a "no penalty" CD, which has lower interest rates than a regular CD, but you can pull your money out at any time without paying a penalty, like you would on a regular CD.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#39

Post by sbjs »

wgerard wrote: post #8
sbjs wrote: post #4

"For the first time in recorded history, the number of job openings is higher than the number of people looking for a job." So what? If there's a thousand Node developers like me looking for work, and a thousand job openings for dentists, that's a mismatch. You may say beggars can't be choosers, but do they expect Node developers who went through CS courses to throw that away and take dentist courses?

The openings seem to be largely in trades or nonskilled labor: > Competition for workers has gone crazy, Joe McConville, who co-owns a popular chain of made-from-scratch pizza restaurants, told me. “At almost every restaurant that I’ve worked at, you always had a stack of applications waiting,” he said. “You’d call somebody up and half the time they're still looking for an extra job. That’s not happening anymore.” >…

I don't know much about the job market, but it seems weird that they push people throw college for degrees they can't use. My friend got a masters degree in pharma and he didn't get a job for about 2 years, his wife had to work as a retail manager to support their whole family, and he had a mental breakdown because of it.

That's the point I was getting at.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#40

Post by lazide »

ryandrake wrote: post #23
wgerard wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> few people I know, even with high net worth and liquidity, have much of anything in a 'savings account' Really? It's fairly common advice to store an emergency fund in something akin to a savings account (or at least something with FDIC backing). Either way, it seems bizarre for a high net worth individual not to have at least $500 in something extremely liquid like a checking/savings account. Either way, it's fair…

> Really? It's fairly common advice to store an emergency fund in something akin to a savings account (or at least something with FDIC backing) That’s where I have my emergency fund (earning nearly zero interest of course). If OP knows of some other type of account with enough liquidity to use as an emergency fund AND generates significant interest, you have my full attention!

allybank, capital one savings, personalsavings.americanexpress.com, and some others all offer >= 1% interest now. Some are >= 2% that I've run across. Still lower than inflation, but better than .001%

Increased fed fund rates and tapering off QE has been having effects. Retail customers generally are unaware of this, so retail banks are still able to not pay any actual interest.

A lot of the weirdness in the market (from Tesla to GE and others) is due to increased returns from 'safe' investments causing easy money for risky ventures to start to dry up. Expect failures as companies built on nearly free money start having to pay up or fold. Some will survive, many won't.

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