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Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

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Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#81

Post by MangoToupe »

BurningFrog wrote: post #78
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even the good old GDP per capita covers your case. Absolutely not. If corporate revenue increases, but wages stay the same, GDP per capita goes up, yet the workers aren't any better off. All that extra money is being absorbed by the ones at the top. Median disposable household income is probably the best measure.

GDP is fairly easy to measure, and since a society normally consumes as much as it produces, it's a pretty good measure of average economic health. You're right that there is more nuance you'd wish to see, but it's harder to measure, and I don't know how much it's normally worth.

> it's a pretty good measure of average economic health

Median economic health strikes me as far more interesting than mean. I don't really care how well rich people are doing.

Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#82

Post by kranke155 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #12
psunavy03 wrote: post #6

We really need better ways of measuring economic health. I could lose my six-figure job, turn around, and get hired on as a server at Applebee's for minimum wage, and the "unemployment" rate would stay the same. Not to mention that it doesn't include those not actively looking for work. Either way, "full employment" doesn't mean much unless you take into account whether people are actually able to live a stable lifes…

We have good metrics. The problem is the media seems to only ever look at one of them at a time but we need to look at several at once to get a more complete picture. Your scenario would be called out by median household income, or better median disposable household income. Even the good old GDP per capita covers your case. Workforce participation also can be valuable instead of or in addition to unemployment numbers…

It's the incentive. There is a reason the media focuses on easily juiced metrics.

Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#83

Post by jandrewrogers »

bilsbie wrote: post #68
psunavy03 wrote: post #6

We really need better ways of measuring economic health. I could lose my six-figure job, turn around, and get hired on as a server at Applebee's for minimum wage, and the "unemployment" rate would stay the same. Not to mention that it doesn't include those not actively looking for work. Either way, "full employment" doesn't mean much unless you take into account whether people are actually able to live a stable lifes…

It sounds silly but we should take it one step further and look at life satisfaction. Who cares about jobs if people are unhappy? Stay at home parents could be way more valuable than more Wall Street jobs.

It is important to note that life satisfaction and happiness are weakly correlated metrics, quite famously so. One is not substitutable for the other. In particular, life satisfaction is correlated with income at all scales whereas happiness is not.

You optimize for one to the detriment of the other. American culture is atypically biased toward the "life satisfaction" side of that tradeoff.

Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#84

Post by triceratops »

ajmurmann wrote: post #60
loudmax wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the problem of scale, and also of duration. Let's say Lee Kuan Yew genuinely wants what's best for Singapore as a whole. How do you ensure that the next autocrat will be equally benign?

This is the exact issue. There is a lot more variance in autocrats. You can get Lee Kuan Yew and you can get Kaiser Wilhelm. With democracy you are much more likely to get something in the middle. In the end of the day the cost of an bad autocrat is higher than the opportunity cost of a milk toast government compared to Lee Kuan Yew. China is still catching up from the Mao years. I do work that social media will chan…

milquetoast, not milk toast

Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#85

Post by relaxing »

jljljl wrote: post #74
darth_avocado wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Median disposable household income is probably the best measure If I used to make $78k as a full time IT employee, but now have to work two jobs to make $78k, I still have same household income but I’m considerably worse than before. A combination of hours worked, wages earned and household debt together would paint a much more accurate picture.

This metric of underemployment is captured in U-5 and U-6 in the BLS statistics. It's less common to report, but in the aftermath of the financial crisis I remember hearing more about it. You can construct a chart in FRED that covers it: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1JWGw

[flagged]

Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#86

Post by _DeadFred_ »

psunavy03 wrote: post #6

We really need better ways of measuring economic health. I could lose my six-figure job, turn around, and get hired on as a server at Applebee's for minimum wage, and the "unemployment" rate would stay the same. Not to mention that it doesn't include those not actively looking for work. Either way, "full employment" doesn't mean much unless you take into account whether people are actually able to live a stable lifes…

Not at you personally, but your post being top and active, while not really relevant to the story presented always makes me wonder do people upvote these tangents to prevent discussion on the threads original topic?

Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#87

Post by RC_ITR »

psunavy03 wrote: post #6

We really need better ways of measuring economic health. I could lose my six-figure job, turn around, and get hired on as a server at Applebee's for minimum wage, and the "unemployment" rate would stay the same. Not to mention that it doesn't include those not actively looking for work. Either way, "full employment" doesn't mean much unless you take into account whether people are actually able to live a stable lifes…

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12032196

We do - People employed part time for Economic Reasons.

If what your looking for is 'People with salaries below the highest they've ever earned', then you're just going to get a very noisy metric of sales people on bad commission years, etc.

Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#88

Post by elzbardico »

hx8 wrote: post #70
darth_avocado wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Median disposable household income is probably the best measure If I used to make $78k as a full time IT employee, but now have to work two jobs to make $78k, I still have same household income but I’m considerably worse than before. A combination of hours worked, wages earned and household debt together would paint a much more accurate picture.

I'm not sure household debt is a great indicator. Someone that has a mortgage will have much more household debt than a renter, but also not have to pay rent. This would need data to contextualize.

Don't matter. You still have the debt. If you lose your job in a depression, odds are no much other people will be in the market to buy your home.

Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#89

Post by darth_avocado »

relaxing wrote: post #85
jljljl wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This metric of underemployment is captured in U-5 and U-6 in the BLS statistics. It's less common to report, but in the aftermath of the financial crisis I remember hearing more about it. You can construct a chart in FRED that covers it: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1JWGw

[flagged]

Economists get things wrong all the time. It’s not about others not possibly have thought of it already, it’s about the fact that policy and politics is still driven by other measures that are inaccurate.

Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#90

Post by elcritch »

danans wrote: post #40
jimbokun wrote: post #31

> But the contraction was capped by payroll expansions in goods-producing roles across industries such as manufacturing and mining. All together, goods-producing positions grew by 32,000 in the month, while payrolls for service roles overall fell by 66,000. Is this tariffs working as intended?

If your metric is "more/better jobs", then yes tariffs are a failure. But in a roundabout sense ... yes they are working. At least if the goal is to discipline and squeeze labor, and return leverage to employers. Part of the goal of the tariffs (and other non-tariff related policies) seems to be to reset leverage at all layers of the labor markets, pushing higher skilled and paid workers into lower skilled and paid m…

If more goods are made locally then it seems rather that unions would have more leverage. They’re not competing with underpaid foreigners in countries with even less unions.

The bigger loss for all employees is the shareholders primary fallacy giving executives excuses to pay workers less. Since there’s no competition for many consumer goods then there’s no pressure to keep prices low and companies just up their profit margin.

The loss in IT / software jobs are again mostly profiteering using AI as an excuse.

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