<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>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></item><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>marcus_holmes</author><text>I thought I&amp;#x27;d bother after reading your comment.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bls.gov&amp;#x2F;news.release&amp;#x2F;empsit.nr0.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bls.gov&amp;#x2F;news.release&amp;#x2F;empsit.nr0.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;and the numbers:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bls.gov&amp;#x2F;news.release&amp;#x2F;empsit.t01.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bls.gov&amp;#x2F;news.release&amp;#x2F;empsit.t01.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s actually kinda straightforward, and very clear about what measures they&amp;#x27;re using. The numbers are bit scary - &amp;quot;The employment-population ratio, at 56.6 percent, changed little over the month but is 4.5 percentage points lower than in February.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The number of persons not in the labor force who currently want a job, at 7.2 million, changed little in September; this measure is 2.3 million higher than in February. These individuals were not counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work during the last 4 weeks or were unavailable to take a job.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;So that&amp;#x27;s 12m officially unemployed, plus 7m &amp;quot;not in the labor force&amp;quot; but who want a job.&lt;p&gt;So yeah, the article is kinda on point; that the numbers don&amp;#x27;t mean what they think we mean. But I have to agree: that&amp;#x27;s not because the numbers aren&amp;#x27;t available for anyone to look at and understand.</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>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></item><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>michaelt</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; Why should any of these people be considered &amp;quot;unemployed&amp;quot;?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because we&amp;#x27;re actually trying to count &amp;quot;people who would be employed, were there more jobs available&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;But as we can&amp;#x27;t read people&amp;#x27;s minds, we can&amp;#x27;t tell the person who&amp;#x27;s happily retired at 58 from someone the same age who&amp;#x27;d rather be in work but can&amp;#x27;t find it, and has started drawing their pension out of necessity.</text></comment>