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Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

The unemployment rate in the US is 4.9% which is basically full employment.

Now sure there are a number of people who don't report and those who wish to work more. But I don't think it's going to be easy to get those people back into work. Most are either in industries that are disappearing due to automation. Or they lack the skills/training to re-educate themselves.

And without tariffs (which will impact exports) there is little chance of US being all that competitive in most industries that compete with Asia (I assume you actually mean China).

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Unemployment is only 4.9% because the participation rate dropped 3% points in the last 10 years: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

That's close to 10 million people who have stopped looking for jobs who we would otherwise expect to have them.

Baby Boomers should be leaving the labor market though.

It's not just old people: "in 2000, if you happened to be a 20-year-old man with less than a Bachelor's Degree--and when I say 20-year old, I mean in their 20s--21 to 30. About 8% reported not working at all during the prior year. That number, today: About 18%."

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/11/erik_hurst_on_w.htm...

But the participation rate can float for a few different reasons

http://qz.com/286213/the-chart-obama-haters-love-most-and-th...

(clickbaity headline, but the contents seem sound)

4.9% isn't even close to being the real unemployment rate.

Nor does it reflect the stagnant/decreasing income of the jobs that people DO have.

Not to mention hordes of underemployed college grads.

You want to look into participation rate. Compare participation and unemployment rate over time and it's clear '4.9%' is pure fallacy.

Roughly 100 million people in the US are out of work or no longer looking for work. That's approx a third of the population. "4.9% is basically full employment" is a terribly naive statement. The trend clearly shows things getting worse, not better.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=4CRu

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