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222,000 Jobs Added To US Payrolls In June; Unemployment Rate Rises To 4.4 Percent (npr.org)
From an NPR report: An estimated 222,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy in June, according to the monthly employment report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Friday. "The job gains were better than expected -- most economists had predicted a gain of 180,000 jobs," NPR's Chris Arnold reports for our Newscast unit. The unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.4 percent from 4.3 percent -- a 16-year low that was hit in May. "Since January, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed are down by 0.4 percentage point and 658,000, respectively," the BLS says. Previous estimates of job gains in recent months were revised upwards -- from 138,000 to 152,000 in May and from 174,000 to 207,000 in June, for a net gain of 47,000.
Keep in mind that the IRS has records of every lawful employment payment (and many unlawful). Each one is reported with time period, money earned, and a unique identifier.
As long as you don't get too picky arguing about why someone hasn't received another legal paycheck since their unemployment returns ended, you can get a useful number. Reporting it as "no longer looking for work" may not be entirely accurate, but "no longer receiving any reported income" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
It also doesn't include people who are retired, or children, or stay-at-home parents, or people in prisons/mental institutions/hospitals/etc. Nor should it. Unemployed doesn't mean "not working", it means "ready, able and willing to work but unable to find a job".
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Not this issue again. There are multiple ways to measure "unemployment", and each are imperfect for different reasons. Part of the problem is that "unemployed" can be a grey area. Lets say Bob is recently retired. He would take up a job if it paid really well or piqued his interest, but Bob otherwise is happy with retirement and is not actively looking. A house wife* may view the job market similarly. Is that "unemployed"?
The metric typically used by the press has been a de-facto standard yardstick for decades, for good or bad.
Pundits often complain about it based on their bias or desired audience influence angle. There are other published metrics of "unemployment", as a nearby message lists, and pundits often switch to one of these others when it suits them.
If a pundit plays such games without explaining the difference and trade-offs, you know they are either biased, manipulative, or clueless. Granted, just because a pundit bungles one issue doesn't mean they bungle everything, but this one is a yellow flag.
* There's probably a PC way to say it. "Non-paid domestic worker?"
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Keep in mind that the IRS has records of every lawful employment payment (and many unlawful). Each one is reported with time period, money earned, and a unique identifier.
These numbers are never used, even though they obviously would give the best data. They can't be manipulated as easily, and it would be too easy to point out that job income per worker has been stagnant or even declined for a generation. GDP has increased tremendously, but it's not showing up in pay packets.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
You claim Labor Force Participation rate only includes those who are of working age, who are physically able to work, but are not actively working, but then link to a chart which lists the participation rate of everyone 16 and up.
The commonly used participation rate for working adults is the Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate: 25 to 54 years. It is currently at 81%, which is still lower than it has been in 30 years (not 40). But if you take away the second half of the 90's, where it peaked, our current participation rate is only about 1% lower than the average over the last 30 years. It has also been trending up since 2014.
Those who are physically unable to work, students, stay at home parents, or whatever are all included as part of the 19% in this statistic.
These figures still show around 1-2 million people who would have been working 15 years ago and aren't today, but the problem certainly is "exploding" as you put it. A bigger problem which isn't reflected in this statistic is how stagnant wages have been; mostly as a product of our economy losing $20/hour jobs and replacing them with $12/hour jobs.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
"shows a remarkable lack of initiative and common sense"
Why would you immediately jump to placing all of the blame on this kid who's trying but can't find a job? Frankly, my experience has been that the lack of initiative and common sense has been entirely with the organization and its rotten "leadership." I cannot tell you how many places put everything but the kitchen sink on their job descriptions and then fight you to the ends of the earth if you ever try to do anything.
This entire industry is stuck in a terrible malaise. Nothing fucking works because nobody is even trying to do anything right. Just silent failures, unexplained hanging, "oops!" error messages, 40 layers of frameworks, and a Chrome update treadmill set to warp fucking speed.
U6 is a bastard number. It measures underemployed, and it peaked at 16%-ish.
I don't like U6 because it's not a good measure of anything. Underemployment means you have 10 people and 5 jobs, so 10 people work half a job (40 hours). They're only underemployed if they desire more working time and work less than full-time. Thing is 10 people working 20 hours each is 10 underemployed; 10 people working 10 hours each is 10 underemployed.
For underemployment, I want new metrics.
The first metric is to measure only the U6 underemployed--they want more hours, but can't get them. Count their hours. Every 40 hours is one job. Give us the number of full-time jobs available as 40 labor-hours per week (2,080 per year) and the number of underemployed. That tells us how many people are fighting over how many jobs.
The second is that, plus people who are content and working less than full time. That gives you an accurate count of all available working hours, excluding any overtime worked. It lets you see how many people are working and content (UN2 persons - UN1 persons) and how many full jobs are available among them.
The third is a full count of all hours including overtime hours. That lets you count the number of full-time jobs against the number of employed plus any UE metric you want. (UN3 jobs)
Now you know precisely how much work is available, how it's distributed, and how our employment market really looks.
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