Women now make up the majority of the U.S. labor force • Hacker News Board

Re: Women now make up the majority of the U.S. labor force

#241

Post by riversflow » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:19 PM UTC

cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #230

riversflow wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy privilege Batman! > unless safeguards were put in place to ensure their malignant genes stopped with them at the end of their days. As if it’s their genetics and not their disenfranchisement from society that makes them want to drop out. We allow cheap foreign labor to displace these people, if we had stricter immigration I can guarantee that there would be less people in poverty, business would have to pay more…

Is this intended shallow provocation or is it an earnest attempt at discussion? You seem to have, intentionally or not, taken a discussion about a hypothetical direction for the generic future and plastered the shortcomings of modern America onto it, and took offense for it. >As if it’s their genetics and not their disenfranchisement from society that makes them want to drop out Some traits are heritable. We know int…

First, I want to thank you for your reply.

The article is about the USA, and the problem is specific to the US. It seemed natural that we were still talking about US society. I didn’t intend to provoke you with my bombast, I simply misinterpreted your argument, my apologies.

The first post didn’t elucidate your points well enough for me to put them in context, and it makes a lot more sense given this additional information. I actually agree with almost everything you said in principle! :) But the ambiguity of your previous post left me genuinely upset, as this particular issue hit close to home. I’m glad to have this sorted.

I tend to see a welfare class as an unfortunate inevitability of social welfare programs. The best thing we can do is have strong public education and holistic healthcare system to try and combat a multi-generation welfare class. It’s a difficult problem.

I’ll leave my original post as is, for the sake of prose.

Re: Women now make up the majority of the U.S. labor force

#242

Post by grawprog » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:24 PM UTC

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #183

shiado wrote: post #80

The labor force participation rates for men and women are currently at 69.2% and 57.7% respectively. They arbitrarily exclude farming positions but cite mining, logging, manufacturing, transportation, and warehouse roles traditionally occupied by men. This article doesn't really seem to paint a full or accurate picture.

FWIW I see "non-farm employment" rather often when anything related to unemployment happens. From what I gather, it's how all the data has been categorized forever. So while I can't give you the reasoning behind it, and don't know if it's still valid or now just being done to make the data comparable, I can assure you choosing this statistic wasn't a bad-faith attempt to manipulate.

Even here in Canada farm related employment is classed separately for a variety of things including taxes and employment insurance. I've never really thought much about it, but every employment related government form I've ever filled out is like that.

Re: Women now make up the majority of the U.S. labor force

#243

Post by asdff » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:25 PM UTC

boomboomsubban wrote: post #106

shiado wrote: post #80

The labor force participation rates for men and women are currently at 69.2% and 57.7% respectively. They arbitrarily exclude farming positions but cite mining, logging, manufacturing, transportation, and warehouse roles traditionally occupied by men. This article doesn't really seem to paint a full or accurate picture.

I doubt the exclusion of farming positions is arbitrary, the area is full of self/family employment and illegal employment that probably caused the exclusion. It does paint a false narrative though.

The family farm model died out decades and decades ago fwiw.

Re: Women now make up the majority of the U.S. labor force

#244

Post by imtringued » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:25 PM UTC

wayoutthere wrote: post #72

nkkollaw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women tend to choose jobs that pay less. They're on average more interested in people, so they tend to choose to become nurses, teachers, etc., while men are interested in things and become software developers, engineers, etc. I have no idea why income HAS TO be distributed equally. Unless you want to force women to become software developers..? But why.

Ignoring everything else wrong with your post, I'll just point out that most software developers were originally women before about 1960 -- it was seen as "woman's work" because it didn't require physical labor. Women were significant contributors to the development of computing from the very beginning -- in fact, "software" as a concept was invented by a woman [1]. The profession didn't become high-status or highly-…

Back then software development was split over a much bigger amount of roles. The idea of a single person sitting in front of a screen is a modern invention.

Re: Women now make up the majority of the U.S. labor force

#245

Post by boomboomsubban » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:30 PM UTC

dooglius wrote: post #159

boomboomsubban wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt the exclusion of farming positions is arbitrary, the area is full of self/family employment and illegal employment that probably caused the exclusion. It does paint a false narrative though.

I think it has more to do with the fact that farm employment is seasonal.

Probably a large factor.

Re: Women now make up the majority of the U.S. labor force

#246

Post by boomboomsubban » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:35 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #243

boomboomsubban wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt the exclusion of farming positions is arbitrary, the area is full of self/family employment and illegal employment that probably caused the exclusion. It does paint a false narrative though.

The family farm model died out decades and decades ago fwiw.

It changed, there are still farm families.

Re: Women now make up the majority of the U.S. labor force

#247

Post by Bartweiss » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:37 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #109

shiado wrote: post #80

The labor force participation rates for men and women are currently at 69.2% and 57.7% respectively. They arbitrarily exclude farming positions but cite mining, logging, manufacturing, transportation, and warehouse roles traditionally occupied by men. This article doesn't really seem to paint a full or accurate picture.

Wait, so women make up the majority of the non-farm labor force, but the labor force participation rate is 12% higher for men? How does that work? Are 12% of men either in the military or on disability? Or what?

Great question, I just went digging.

I found three big factors. First, the "labor force" has no age cap, so there are lots more women alive than men. Second, lots of adult men are in the military or prison, so equal numbers of jobs would mean higher male labor force participation. Third, "nonfarm payrolls" doesn't just mean nonfarm, and excludes more employed men than women. But there's one big issue with nonprofit labor I couldn't sort out.

(Details in the child post.)

Re: Women now make up the majority of the U.S. labor force

#248

Post by Bartweiss » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:43 PM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #247

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so women make up the majority of the non-farm labor force, but the labor force participation rate is 12% higher for men? How does that work? Are 12% of men either in the military or on disability? Or what?

Great question, I just went digging. I found three big factors. First, the "labor force" has no age cap, so there are lots more women alive than men. Second, lots of adult men are in the military or prison, so equal numbers of jobs would mean higher male labor force participation. Third, "nonfarm payrolls" doesn't just mean nonfarm, and excludes more employed men than women. But there's one big issue with nonprofit l…

Math for the summary above:

From the BLS stats in question (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm), the total "civilian noninstitutional population" (i.e. labor force) is 260 million. Of the 244 million who are ages 20+ and broken out by gender, there are 117.4M men and 126.0M women.

Why the difference?

- Disabled people are still included for the labor force cohort unless they're hospitalized/institutionalized, so the gender-gap impact is relatively low.

- Active-duty military service covers 1.3M adults, 90% male.

- Incarceration covers 2.3M adults, 90% male.

- The "labor force" has no upper age boundary, so the 20+ cohort has about 6 million more women. (1.5M people are in nursing homes and not counted, but the gender split is fairly even.)

That's 6 million more women total, and 3M more men than women excluded from the pool, against a laborforce gap of ~9 million. Looks pretty complete for the denominator. But the raw number of total nonfarm payrolls listed is 76.2 million per gender. That would be 66.9% male LFPR, and 62.3% female LFPR, which we know isn't right.

The BLS report instead has a male 20+ LFPR of 84M (71.5%) and female 20+ of 74.5M (59.2%), which is that 12% gap. What gives?

- Farm labor is part of the LFPR. That data is extremely messy, but there are ~3M farm workers who appear to be ~75% male.

- "Proprietors", or unincorporated self-employed people, aren't counted. That's 9.5M people, roughly 68% male.

- Multiple jobs count as multiple payrolls, but one employment. This adds 6-7M non-employment payrolls per gender to help explain why the employment counts don't match payrolls, and up to 0.5M more female payrolls than male. (Although I can't tell what percentage are nonfarm payrolls.)

That correction gets us to 70.7% male LFPR and 60.7% female LFPR, which is much closer to correct. Correct for the 16-19 numbers at it gets even closer. Looks good!

...except that apparently nonprofit jobs aren't included in nonfarm payrolls either. And that's 12M people, ~73% female. Which completely blows out the stats, so badly that I can't find any way to fix it. All I can say is either seasonal adjustment, or major differences in raw population counts between the methods (e.g. response rate gaps). Does anyone else know what's up?

Re: Women now make up the majority of the U.S. labor force

#249

Post by syshum » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:45 PM UTC

asiachick wrote: post #199

anon9001 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some are living in their parents basement until they're 30 to 40. I understand this is considered a bad thing, and it makes sense at a societal level, but honestly it sounds like a pretty amazing life. Maybe that would have been boring and depressing pre-internet, but it seems pretty good now. I know one dude who essentially grifted his way into the disability system, and I've watched him go from an anxious mess to…

It's extremely American (not sure about other western countries) to judge people, especially men, who are living at home in a very negative light. Old reference but the classic song "Scrubs" by TLC is is about not wanting to date a "scrub" and describes a "scrub" as "lives at home with your mama" Conversely, in many Asian countries it's common to live at home until well into your 30s and 40s. In know families in most…

It is a direct result of marketing by 3 Industries

Banks, Weddings, and Real Estate. Those 3 combined have made it the "American Dream" to buy a girl a fossilized carbon rock "worth" several times your monthly income, throw a big party at a cost exceeding most peoples yearly income, have 2.5 kids, and buy a home several times more than your yearly income

Anything less that massive debt and obtaining this "ideal" "American Dream" means your a loser

Re: Women now make up the majority of the U.S. labor force

#250

Post by Bartweiss » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:48 PM UTC

boomboomsubban wrote: post #106

shiado wrote: post #80

The labor force participation rates for men and women are currently at 69.2% and 57.7% respectively. They arbitrarily exclude farming positions but cite mining, logging, manufacturing, transportation, and warehouse roles traditionally occupied by men. This article doesn't really seem to paint a full or accurate picture.

I doubt the exclusion of farming positions is arbitrary, the area is full of self/family employment and illegal employment that probably caused the exclusion. It does paint a false narrative though.

It's a longstanding measurement, yeah. And it's not actually just excluding agriculture, the definition removes a whole cluster of jobs that are especially hard to track accurately, including all of nonprofit employment and unincorporated self-employment (i.e. most of construction, handymanning, etc.)

Of course, farm labor and unincorporated self-employment are heavily male, and nonprofit work is heavily female. So it's a useful statistic for accurate change-over-time data, but stories like this treating 50% as an inherently meaningful tipping point are wildly misleading.