281–290 of 377 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, I picked Singapore, because I moved here. I picked US because that was the topic under discussion. And Britain because the parent comment talked about 'free' healthcare.
complete misreading between the lines on my part then apologies
As a data scientist it is very frustrating to see a consistent lack of error bars on these numbers or any discussion about the magnitude of uncertainty around them by all news reports every time these numbers get released
The BLS has been gutted. It's surprising anything negative is escaping in these reports.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, I mean on an age-corrected basis, throughout the spectrum of ages. i.e. young americans are spending more on health care than young americans used to, even if it's also true that there are fewer young americans now, and more old americans.
Part of the Obamacare mandate was forcing young men into health insurance policies when in the past they had a much higher opt out percentage.
I have recently started an experiment tracking a sample of 5000 employers in US and I see a bounce last week after a brief lull in july. I am not sure if there is a strong downward trend. https://corvi.careers/reports/usa-weekly-job-openings-report...
It's tough to trust job openings. It is a fact that some number of job postings are ghost jobs that don't exist. Either they're scams from impersonators or the companies are trying to keep a good public face, but many openings sit for MONTHS which just does not line up with the anecdotal evidence of people going 6-12 months without an interview much less an offer
Neither of these things are evidence of “ghost jobs”.
When I was doing a lot of hiring it would often take months to find qualified candidates for basic roles. I would get 100s of applicants per month but only about 20% of the resumes I received were even close to qualified. I’d try to schedule intro and screening calls with the qualified ones who would actually respond, but you wouldn’t believe how many applicants would have unreliable communication skills. Some times I wouldn’t get a response from someone for weeks or more, but many just don’t respond to contact after applying to your company. If we’re using the lingo I think a lot are “ghost candidates”.
There’s further fallout through the interview pipelines as you discover how many people have lied on their resume or otherwise aren’t qualified. That self-styled C++ expert who can’t give an example of RAII or the self-proclaimed TypeScript expert who doesn’t know anything outside of vanilla JavaScript. It’s weird.
Then there are negotiations. Some candidates want to collect offers from multiple companies and will ask for delays in hiring so they can continue interviewing and getting other offers. It can take weeks for some candidates to accept or decline your offer. If they decline you have to go to the next candidate, which can take more weeks, and then on to the next. If there’s relocation involved it takes longer to decide and get it done.
Then some times we’re hiring multiple people for a row, so we leave the listing up and open to continue hiring. This really angers the “ghost jobs” people because they assume 1 listing == 1 hire, as if the company needs to close the listing and then copy/paste to a new URL for the next hire.
So job openings that exist for “MONTHS” are not evidence of ghost jobs.
The people going 12 months without an interview are almost always doing something wrong. You wouldn’t believe how inexcusably bad many of the resumes out there can be. Some people are hung up on applying only to jobs they aren’t qualified for and then wonder why they’re not getting interviews.
And, as a result, the market is ... up?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, they shouldn't. Timely estimates as to the best knowledge of our current situation is extremely important for decision making under uncertainty. If the error bars are large, that is important information to know.
What decisions are so important and time sensitive they depend on these numbers right after a month is over? And also we at one point were making decisions without these numbers yet the quality of the decision making isn’t clearly improved.
"What sort of startups should I fund?"
"Should my business aggressively hire this quarter anticipating growth, or hold out for a possible recession?"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So perhaps we'll never get to a better healthcare+insurance market (nee "Free") through government, but eventually we will just all work in healthcare, and barter our nursing and dental skills in secret away from the insurance coders.
You can move to Singapore, if you want a better healthcare sector. (The UK spends very roughly half of what the US spends on healthcare in terms of percentage of GDP. That's total (public plus private) expenditure. Singapore spends very roughtly half of what the UK spends by the same measure. Health outcomes amongst the three countries are comparable. If anything, Singapore is healthier.)
> The BLS said employment contracted the most in “local government education,” which declined by 50,000 roles, likely reflecting teachers during summer break. This is not entirely accurate. AFAIK, teachers usually remain on payroll throughout the summer. This stat _might_ be talking about contractual teaching roles, like adjuncts or subs, but it's hard to say from that BLS category.
> The BLS said employment contracted the most in “local government education,” which declined by 50,000 roles, likely reflecting teachers during summer break. This is not entirely accurate. AFAIK, teachers usually remain on payroll throughout the summer. This stat _might_ be talking about contractual teaching roles, like adjuncts or subs, but it's hard to say from that BLS category.
I don't think it's attributable to summer break. Didn't ~1,100K teachers quit in Fort Worth, TX due (in part) to a rise in political interference?
The deficit is 6% of GDP. Economic growth is 2%, if that. If the Democrats win the House and reduce spending, look out below.