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The True Rate of Unemployment

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Re: The True Rate of Unemployment

#51

Post by strix_varius »

williamcotton wrote: post #47
strix_varius wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, your stance is that https://www.kentucky.gov/ does not represent the government?

My stance is that whoever the governor of KY is is not “the government” and will cherry pick stats for his own personal gain. The actual government is reporting the real rates of unemployment. Partisans are the issue.

That's an astounding amount of hair splitting to claim that the people in charge of governing - literally with the title "govern-or" - are not "the government."

No true Scotsman indeed!

Re: The True Rate of Unemployment

#52

Post by nradov »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #28
jeffbee wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once got downvoted into oblivion on this very website for advocating for a society with 90% unemployment. The stats are just stats but they're not necessarily what we should be chasing.

I believe the goal of humanity should be that pushing a button for food pellets all day long is not a moral imperative or a necessity for survival. 100% unemployment should be the goal, and the end of scarcity that would require its feasibility.

Social status will always be scarce because it's a zero-sum game; in order for one person to rise another must fall. Even if basic necessities were free the majority of people would choose to work in order to have more than their peers. This is just human nature.

Re: The True Rate of Unemployment

#53

Post by rpgwaiter »

CydeWeys wrote: post #42
comte7092 wrote: post #2

>Using data compiled by the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $25,000 annually before taxes. So many discussions online about unemployment take a framing like this, implying not so subtly tha…

Yeah, it's just downright misleading to qualify someone working a full time job making $24k/yr as unemployed. The US national minimum wage, believe it or not, only amounts to $15k/yr for full time employment (40 hrs/wk!). I think you could certainly call these people "poor", but not unemployed. That word means something different.

That's why they use the qualifier "functionally".

Sure the term might not be ideal but it serves a purpose. Living in the current US with 24k a year is miserable (more or less depending on location).

When people bring up unemployment in terms of public policy, they generally are discussing actionable problems. Like "the unemployment rate is 6% so the gov should make incentives to hire more people".

These discussions could (ought to) include people that can't afford a car in the non-walkable US, or who have to live with relatives or roommates because affordable housing is a fantasy. "Maybe someone working full time should be able to afford their own place and eat more than rice and ramen"

Someone making 15k a year working 40 hours is functionlly unemployed, in every sense of the phrase imo

Re: The True Rate of Unemployment

#54

Post by cyberax »

milesskorpen wrote: post #24
okaram wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, we are NOT having high inflation any more, regardless of what you feel or think.

Sure, inflation rates have come down from their highs, but we don't have deflation so $1 today is still worth less than $1 from 2020 — which means $15/hr minimum wage is worth less today than in 2020.

The minimum wage is rising, however.

Re: The True Rate of Unemployment

#55

Post by CardenB »

ta2234234242 wrote: post #40
CardenB wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are arguing that there is increasing mobility? Or do you argue that people are bouncing between jobs with lower wage growth and higher wage growth, so the bottom 25% of wages are getting worse and worse, yet they are only temporary? It seems pretty clear that 25% of earners experience no growth or negative growth YoY while 25% of earners see wage growth that outpaces inflation. Unless they are swapping places…

Are you arguing there's not increasing mobility, with this new fangled internet and the series of tubes and what have you? Upward mobility has never been more available across all income brackets. Again... you want to look at the number of people in poverty. That's the true metric of an economy, not the unemployment number.

True metric of an economy is not just poverty rate.

I can have 3x the income of monthly food budget (poverty threshold). What happens when housing per month is also 3x the cost of food per month?

Poverty threshold is a poor indicator of the economic health. Poverty can lower while the ability for the average citizen to support a family continues to drop.

> Are you arguing there's not increasing mobility, with this new fangled internet and the series of tubes and what have you?

That's not an argument. Technological improvements can result in consolidation of capital and rising inequality. Something like that would be indicated by... top 25% of wage earners outpacing inflation while bottom 25% continue to stagnate or fall behind.

EDIT: The last poverty rate publication showed the supplemental poverty rate rising (taking into account more factors that traditional poverty rate). Previous to the pandemic, they were largely correlated. We will have to wait until the 2024 results to see if the inversion holds true.

source: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

Re: The True Rate of Unemployment

#56

Post by nradov »

jrflowers wrote: post #23
okaram wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, we are NOT having high inflation any more, regardless of what you feel or think.

Whenever I hear people complain about rent or groceries I always politely inform them that the Δ Δ of their rent is quite low this month and that means the economy is in fact good

You're in good company. When President Nixon was campaigning for reelection in 1972 he told voters that the third derivative of inflation was decreasing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_derivative#%3A%7E%3Atext...

Re: The True Rate of Unemployment

#57

Post by baron816 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #42
comte7092 wrote: post #2

>Using data compiled by the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $25,000 annually before taxes. So many discussions online about unemployment take a framing like this, implying not so subtly tha…

Yeah, it's just downright misleading to qualify someone working a full time job making $24k/yr as unemployed. The US national minimum wage, believe it or not, only amounts to $15k/yr for full time employment (40 hrs/wk!). I think you could certainly call these people "poor", but not unemployed. That word means something different.

Keep in mind that only 1.3% of workers earn the minimum wage https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2022/home.htm#....

I’m sure a sizable portion of them are students.

Re: The True Rate of Unemployment

#58

Post by rahimnathwani »

strix_varius wrote: post #41
rahimnathwani wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reddit comment is itself opinionated. The poster says that you don't want to count people who are disabled or who don't want to work. I'd argue we should count those people. If someone has failed to find a job they want for a long time, they might give up. That reduces the numerator and denominator each by 1, reducing the calculated unemployment rate. Does that make any sense?

Agreed. Similarly, "who [is] disabled" is far from objective: https://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ 18.7% of West Virginians are on disability, so aren't counted as unemployed. Meanwhile only 10.5% of New Jerseyans are. Are West Virginians really almost twice as likely to be physically disabled as their near-neighbors in NJ?

I was thinking of this article when I wrote my comment, but didn't bother to search for it. Thanks for reading my mind and taking the time to find the article!

Re: The True Rate of Unemployment

#59

Post by woobar »

CardenB wrote: post #37
ta2234234242 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but not everyone stays in the bottom 25%. College students would be one category that you would expect this to be true of. I was certainly in the poverty level in college, but not anymore. What we really care about are the people who are persistently in poverty and whether or not that number grows or shrinks. If it shrinks the economy is helping real people, if it's not, it's helping the well off.

So you are arguing that there is increasing mobility? Or do you argue that people are bouncing between jobs with lower wage growth and higher wage growth, so the bottom 25% of wages are getting worse and worse, yet they are only temporary? It seems pretty clear that 25% of earners experience no growth or negative growth YoY while 25% of earners see wage growth that outpaces inflation. Unless they are swapping places…

Are you sure that this chart shows bottom 25% of wages and not the bottom 25% of wage change?

They provide this definition: Wage Growth Tracker is a measure of the nominal wage growth of individuals. It is constructed using microdata from the Current Population Survey (CPS), and is the median percent change in the hourly wage of individuals observed 12 months apart.

Chart 1 plots the time series of the median, along with the mean, and the 75th and 25th percentiles of the individual wage growth distribution

I believe this chart will almost always show little or negative numbers for the bottom 25% of wage growth. By definition.

Re: The True Rate of Unemployment

#60

Post by phendrenad2 »

zzleeper wrote: post #9

If this data is correct, then ONE THIRD of the population was unemployed in 1995. Is this reasonable? Also, why include people with no jobs? That would include stay-at-home parents and even FIRE folks that retired early

I think it's very reasonable. I knew a lot of people, of all ages, who lived with or were supported by family members, while working part-time and going to school or just having fun being unemployed. I think that those with jobs had a lot more purchasing power with which they could support others.
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