I feel like we should be able to quantify what “employed” is in the unemployment metrics… Like, if you barely have a job and it pays you next to nothing (below a living wage) then you should be considered to be in the unemployment pool.
I think if that was the way it was counted, then the numbers would actually look atrocious.
In all actual fact, they specifically exclude people who are not actively looking for a job from the unemployment numbers. Historically this was to reduce the unemployment numbers from all the unemployed spouses that were stay at home parents or whatever. Now it’s just a way to mask how many have gotten so thoroughly fucked by the system that they gave up.
if you barely have a job and it pays you next to nothing (below a living wage) then you should be considered to be in the unemployment pool.
They do track this. It’s called underemployment. On the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, you can find this table which indirectly gives this data: the difference between U-5 and U-6. Underemployment is about 2.4%.
I feel like we should be able to quantify what “employed” is in the unemployment metrics… Like, if you barely have a job and it pays you next to nothing (below a living wage) then you should be considered to be in the unemployment pool.
I think if that was the way it was counted, then the numbers would actually look atrocious.
In all actual fact, they specifically exclude people who are not actively looking for a job from the unemployment numbers. Historically this was to reduce the unemployment numbers from all the unemployed spouses that were stay at home parents or whatever. Now it’s just a way to mask how many have gotten so thoroughly fucked by the system that they gave up.
They do track this. It’s called underemployment. On the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, you can find this table which indirectly gives this data: the difference between U-5 and U-6. Underemployment is about 2.4%.