True Rate of Unemployment
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True Rate of Unemployment
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Re: True Rate of Unemployment
#2I don't see the revelation, it still appears we're near historical lows and it's not spiking. It's not like there is any divergence between before and now. It's not bad to know what this rate is but it's also not revealing a lie. If you apply their stat methodologies to other G-7, you get similar results.
Re: True Rate of Unemployment
#3[deleted]
Re: True Rate of Unemployment
#4I see some odd effects. I wonder how these would be explained?
According to the headline rate, unemployment was about the same in 1995. According to this alternative measure of unemployment, it's gone down by around 8% overall.
When split by race, it's gone down the most for Hispanics.
By education, it's gone down the most for people who didn't complete High School.
Re: True Rate of Unemployment
#5[deleted]
Re: True Rate of Unemployment
#6I don't see the revelation, it still appears we're near historical lows and it's not spiking. It's not like there is any divergence between before and now. It's not bad to know what this rate is but it's also not revealing a lie. If you apply their stat methodologies to other G-7, you get similar results.
Just because the economic system we have has always been shitty for a high percentage of our neighbors doesn’t mean it always has to be that way. Other top economic countries being similar doesn’t excuse it.
Re: True Rate of Unemployment
#7I see some odd effects. I wonder how these would be explained? According to the headline rate, unemployment was about the same in 1995. According to this alternative measure of unemployment, it's gone down by around 8% overall. When split by race, it's gone down the most for Hispanics. By education, it's gone down the most for people who didn't complete High School.
Just a guess but gig work might be picking up some of that slack?
Re: True Rate of Unemployment
#8> ...or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $26,000 (in 2025 dollars) annually before taxes.
I couldn't easily tell how they decided on a $26,000 "living wage" figure but in most of the US, even double that is not Easy Street.
The "True Rate of Barely Getting By" is ridiculously high in the US from what I can gather.
Re: True Rate of Unemployment
#9This definition sounds like U-6 unemployment (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE) with an additional term for people making below a living wage. That's better constructed than most of these "real stats" I see, so I hate to be too critical. But they don't really engage with the important question of whether this metric is sufficiently robust for policymakers to use. Just eyeballing it, it seems to be quite a bit more volatile than the headline rate; if the Fed tried to target it, for example, would they end up doing a bunch of unnecessary rate cuts to stave off unemployment spikes that aren't real?
Re: True Rate of Unemployment
#10I see some odd effects. I wonder how these would be explained? According to the headline rate, unemployment was about the same in 1995. According to this alternative measure of unemployment, it's gone down by around 8% overall. When split by race, it's gone down the most for Hispanics. By education, it's gone down the most for people who didn't complete High School.
State level minimum wages were much less common in 1995, so it was easier for workers to be below their poverty threshold. Even though the federal wage got stuck, in many states today, the minimum wage is high enough that it's not possible for a full time worker to make less than $26,000 in a year.