Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

True Rate of Unemployment

lisep.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 381 posts

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#111

Post by em500 »

xelxebar wrote: post #93

From a cursory read of their white paper, my impression is that LISEP is trying to quantify the sense that making a livable income is harder and more disparate than it used to be. IMHO, this should be read as a campaign to improve and add precision to a political narrative more than an indictment of existing statistics. In particular, the BLS in the US reports 6 different measures of unemployment, U-1 through U-6, ea…

> From a cursory read of their white paper, my impression is that LISEP is trying to quantify the sense that making a livable income is harder and more disparate than it used to be.

But their own defined measure shows the opposite. The first graph on their website shows that their True Rate is currently at its lowest level over the past 30 years.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#112

Post by Balinares »

afpx wrote: post #104

Tangential question: how do you actually find and hire people? I have a decent amount of disposable income [1], and I often want to pay people to help with things I’m not particularly skilled at. The problem is that I have no idea how to reliably find the right person or even how to structure the arrangement once I do. I have lots of examples, but here’s a recent one. A device failed, and replacing it would have cost…

For real. I'd pay good money for a concierge service to find me the right person.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#113

Post by Gareth321 »

afpx wrote: post #104

Tangential question: how do you actually find and hire people? I have a decent amount of disposable income [1], and I often want to pay people to help with things I’m not particularly skilled at. The problem is that I have no idea how to reliably find the right person or even how to structure the arrangement once I do. I have lots of examples, but here’s a recent one. A device failed, and replacing it would have cost…

Great points. I have the same problem. I often end up throwing things away or doing work myself when I would be happy to pay the right people to do it. The classical response is that this is a failure of marketing, but marketing is no longer about connecting the right customer with the right business. It's about tricking people into buying things they don't need or want.

I think AI will solve this in the future. It's already been super helpful to me at scouring the internet for well reviewed products and services. It will only get better as its parametric knowledge improves, its ability to statistically analyse businesses and "reviews" and exclude the fakes, malicious, or predatory, and its ability to problem solve laterally or in unexpected ways.

FYI there are already handyman sites like Taskrabbit in the US which help connect you with people who can do these odd jobs. They have review systems as well. But I don't know if many of them cater to electronic or more skilled repair.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#114

Post by keiferski »

afpx wrote: post #104

Tangential question: how do you actually find and hire people? I have a decent amount of disposable income [1], and I often want to pay people to help with things I’m not particularly skilled at. The problem is that I have no idea how to reliably find the right person or even how to structure the arrangement once I do. I have lots of examples, but here’s a recent one. A device failed, and replacing it would have cost…

The short answer is probably to find people making online content about the thing you want done, and contacting them.

I follow a couple electronics repair YouTubers, and I imagine they would be interested.

Personally though I live in a city where there are a few electronic repair shops, so I’d just take it there.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#115

Post by ChickeNES »

DaSHacka wrote: post #106
testing22321 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are too many jobs that do not pay enough to live on. That may be the case in the US, but not so in other countries. For example in Australia minimum wage is $26.44/hr. But If you don’t have a job, you can get between $740 and $1047 every two weeks as welfare, forever. Employers know this. Employees know this. So a job has to pay decently more than that or else nobody will do it.

> So a job has to pay decently more than that or else nobody will do it. Yeah, though the problem in the U.S. is we have a constant influx of workers perfectly happy to serve as scabs, and no mainstream political party is willing to address the problem in any meaningful way. Turns out supply and demand also applies to labor, and artificially restricting the supply increases the demand for your own labor, allowing you…

Sounds like more at the expense of immigrants than companies? Scabs? What is this, the 1950s?

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#116

Post by strken »

testing22321 wrote: post #97
runako wrote: post #11

Anybody who believes ~30% of the workforce was functionally unemployed in 1999 does not know what those words mean, or was not an adult in 1999. I get what they are trying to convey, but the stronger message is the more straightforward: there are too many jobs that do not pay enough to live on.

> there are too many jobs that do not pay enough to live on. That may be the case in the US, but not so in other countries. For example in Australia minimum wage is $26.44/hr. But If you don’t have a job, you can get between $740 and $1047 every two weeks as welfare, forever. Employers know this. Employees know this. So a job has to pay decently more than that or else nobody will do it.

One really nice economic factor of the dole is that it disappears at a rate of 50c for each $1 of earnings above $150 and at 60c above $256, so there's no welfare cliff.

This does mean that you're effectively only earning 40c for every $1 you earn in that middle band, but that's still less of a disincentive than just taking the whole payment away above a certain threshold.

I think we could move to a UBI surprisingly easily by giving everyone the dole and then taxing their income a bit more.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#117

Post by Gareth321 »

floro wrote: post #44

Everyone knows the stats are false but I don't know an alternative. I've been unemployed after graduating for a year and because I didn't use unemployment benefits I didn't show up in the statistics in switzerland. I know many cases like mine.

For this reason I use the employment rate instead. The unemployment rate, as you've correctly pointed out, is very narrowly defined. Obviously so as to trick voters into thinking that everything is fine. The employment rate can't really be gamed like that.

The second major issue is under-employment. You could have a PhD in AI and as long as you're working 20 years a week at a pizza place, you're "employed." Unfortunately this isn't solved by using the employment rate. There are various ways to measure this but they all contain some measure of subjectivity.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#118

Post by marcus_holmes »

defrost wrote: post #33
marcus_holmes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, this is interesting. Folks I've been talking to see a huge hit coming for us. Mining is getting automated (and coal/gas have huge problems). Education is getting hit by AI. Agriculture is good but employs relatively few people. Property is and always has been a zero-sum game that soaks up capital but doesn't return anything. Construction is getting pulled into building data centres for US hyperscalers. We don…

> We don't seem to be able to differentiate our economy away from resources at all Or, equally importantly, control the means of production better than we've been doing to date - for a number of mineral resources and a great deal of energy we seem content with being tossed scraps in exchange for granting access for others to extract and sell on elsewhere. > looking pretty bleak for the Lucky Country. Pretty much as D…

To your point, the argument about the 20% Gas Export tax has been interesting. Fossil fuel lobbyists employed by foreign companies clearly and openly buying politicians to try and fend it off, when it's obviously in Australia's interests to implement it.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#120

Post by [deleted] »

teiferer wrote: post #86
floro wrote: post #44

Everyone knows the stats are false but I don't know an alternative. I've been unemployed after graduating for a year and because I didn't use unemployment benefits I didn't show up in the statistics in switzerland. I know many cases like mine.

Then maybe it's time you look up how unemployment statistics are calculated in Switzerland and you will be surprised that you counted into them. It's unclear to me how folks with a university education can make such simplistic statements.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN