<story><title>America&apos;s True Unemployment Rate</title><url>https://www.axios.com/americas-true-unemployment-rate-6e34decb-c274-4feb-a4af-ffac8cf5840d.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dalbasal</author><text>I agree that there is no &amp;quot;true&amp;quot; measure, just different measures.&lt;p&gt;That said, the standard unemployment measure the author is objecting to is just as (more really) disingenuous in practice. It also stacks confusion. &amp;quot;Unemployment&amp;quot; used as a primary barometer for the labour economy.&lt;p&gt;People (including journalists, politicians... high stakes stuff) assume that unemployment captures most unemployment. They don&amp;#x27;t consider that most unemployed 58 year olds are not counted because they &amp;quot;retired,&amp;quot; stopped seeking work or receive a disability benefit. When&amp;#x2F;if these become substantial, the measure means very little.&lt;p&gt;Every time a journalist note record high&amp;#x2F;low unemployment of X%, it&amp;#x27;s probably just as deceptive or (more likely) misleading. The measure itself means something different in 2020 than it did in 1980, or in a different country&amp;#x2F;region.&lt;p&gt;At least the &amp;quot;true&amp;quot; appendage makes clear that there are differing and divergent ways to measure unemployment, and that these cn result in huge differences.</text></item><item><author>mountainb</author><text>This is phrased in a very deceptive way. There are lots of issues with the &amp;#x27;Unemployment&amp;#x27; metric. It is indeed a deceptive metric. However, it is deliberately misleading to append &amp;#x27;True&amp;#x27; to &amp;#x27;Unemployment Rate&amp;#x27; with a custom definition intended to make an argument. You are stacking confusion on confusion instead of clarifying. If you want to create a different metric around a &amp;#x27;living wage,&amp;#x27; then it should be defined in a way that makes that more clear.&lt;p&gt;There are also serious regional differences in what such a wage might be. $2000&amp;#x2F;month is enough to live comfortably with a personal car in low cost of living regions. In NYC it means you are probably stacked into a decaying apartment with many other people with no car.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>itsoktocry</author><text>&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;They don&amp;#x27;t consider that most unemployed 58 year olds are not counted because they &amp;quot;retired,&amp;quot; stopped seeking work or receive a disability benefit.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why &lt;i&gt;should&lt;/i&gt; any of these people be considered &amp;quot;unemployed&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;Every time there&amp;#x27;s a discussion of unemployment, or inflation, people bring up the measurements as &amp;quot;misleading&amp;quot;.  The BLS tracks this stuff because people in the real world need to use it, not because there&amp;#x27;s some disingenuous political purpose.  There are a ton of different metrics to get a broad picture of the labour market, as defined, and they put them out there, free to use.  The idea that the army of economists at the BLS don&amp;#x27;t understand things like people being retired is just wrong.&lt;p&gt;We spend a lot of time criticizing journalists and politicians, but how many people bother to look at the data themselves if interested?</text></comment>
<story><title>America&apos;s True Unemployment Rate</title><url>https://www.axios.com/americas-true-unemployment-rate-6e34decb-c274-4feb-a4af-ffac8cf5840d.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dalbasal</author><text>I agree that there is no &amp;quot;true&amp;quot; measure, just different measures.&lt;p&gt;That said, the standard unemployment measure the author is objecting to is just as (more really) disingenuous in practice. It also stacks confusion. &amp;quot;Unemployment&amp;quot; used as a primary barometer for the labour economy.&lt;p&gt;People (including journalists, politicians... high stakes stuff) assume that unemployment captures most unemployment. They don&amp;#x27;t consider that most unemployed 58 year olds are not counted because they &amp;quot;retired,&amp;quot; stopped seeking work or receive a disability benefit. When&amp;#x2F;if these become substantial, the measure means very little.&lt;p&gt;Every time a journalist note record high&amp;#x2F;low unemployment of X%, it&amp;#x27;s probably just as deceptive or (more likely) misleading. The measure itself means something different in 2020 than it did in 1980, or in a different country&amp;#x2F;region.&lt;p&gt;At least the &amp;quot;true&amp;quot; appendage makes clear that there are differing and divergent ways to measure unemployment, and that these cn result in huge differences.</text></item><item><author>mountainb</author><text>This is phrased in a very deceptive way. There are lots of issues with the &amp;#x27;Unemployment&amp;#x27; metric. It is indeed a deceptive metric. However, it is deliberately misleading to append &amp;#x27;True&amp;#x27; to &amp;#x27;Unemployment Rate&amp;#x27; with a custom definition intended to make an argument. You are stacking confusion on confusion instead of clarifying. If you want to create a different metric around a &amp;#x27;living wage,&amp;#x27; then it should be defined in a way that makes that more clear.&lt;p&gt;There are also serious regional differences in what such a wage might be. $2000&amp;#x2F;month is enough to live comfortably with a personal car in low cost of living regions. In NYC it means you are probably stacked into a decaying apartment with many other people with no car.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>While this may be true, the article&amp;#x27;s premise that the BLS was somehow cooked up to hide the &amp;quot;true&amp;quot; unemployment rate rings hollow, mainly because the BLS &lt;i&gt;also&lt;/i&gt; tracks and reports tons of other labor-related statistics, including for example &amp;quot;discouraged&amp;quot; workers, those working part-time but want to work full-time, overall labor force participation rate, etc.&lt;p&gt;These days I even see mainstream media outlets report lots of different numbers beyond the &amp;quot;baseline&amp;quot; unemployment rate, so I just feel like this whole article is written from the &amp;quot;you&amp;#x27;re not considering my preferred statistic as the &amp;#x27;true&amp;#x27; one so you&amp;#x27;re wrong&amp;quot; angle.</text></comment>