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Comment by CPAhem | Hacker News Reader

>Yes. Unemployment is very low. Actually it is not that low, especially out of the tech sector.

Real unemployment and under-employment are high because of the way unemployment is now measured. The definition of being unemployed has changed since the GFC to manipulate the statistics.

Some tricks to manipulate the numbers are:

- If you have been unemployed for more than 6 months you are no longer classified as unemployed.

- Work for one hour a month, say mow your neighbor's lawn or give someone a paid ride in your car and you are no longer unemployed.

- Give up an stop looking for work, and you're no longer unemployed.

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If you're going to accuse someone of manipulating unemployment indices, please specify which index you mean, e.g. U3, U4, U5, or U6.

Looking at different indices at different times is obviously going to skew the results, but that's the fault of the person doing the looking, not the BLS, Obama, or the Deep State.

Who said Deep State? Are you using the terms actual usage? i.e. Unelected career bureaucrat? Or, are you using the colloquial definition meaning a conspiring group of unelected career bureaucrats attempting to resist change in the federal government?

I listed "Deep State" as an example of a group that conspiracy theorists often blame for manipulative government activity. I would be thoroughly unsurprised if there were 10 common definitions of the term that were all ill-posed. Fortunately, the precise definition of "Deep State" has nothing whatsoever to do with my argument, so elaboration on the point is completely unnecessary.

The employment rate covers point 1 and 3: it is simply the number of people in work divided by the working age population.

I think you might be confusing cyclical and structural unemployment with your first point. I think it is valid to talk about the two numbers separately as they deal with pretty different problems (labour market liquidity/efficiency versus skills shortages).

The employment rate is at an all time high in many countries.

As for point 2: employment in the black economy is usually not included in official employment figures; people who want to work more hours are classed as underemployed although data on this is not as comprehensive as for the other measures.

I do not think the definition of employment has changed much in the last decade. Do you have a source?

>it is simply the number of people in work divided by the working age population.

Nah, this would be the labor force participation rate - and that one took a plunge since 2008 and never recovered since.

https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

They're pretty close to synonyms in my and other people's understanding [1,2], but I would be unsurprised if some countries defined them differently. Edit: I've since realised from reading my own links carefully the labour force participation rate is employed + unemployed (looking for work) / working age population. Employment rate is employed / working age population. So I think I was right with saying employment rate initially : )

The OECD chart linked (if you play with the sliders) shows that both are increasing globally. I know that in the UK the employment rate is at an all-time high [3].

Your link seems like it might be using a strange measure of employment [4] which excludes agricultural workers and the military in the numerator and includes all people who are aged 16+ in the denominator, so as your population ages, the indicator would worsen.

[1] https://data.oecd.org/emp/employment-rate.htm

[2] https://data.oecd.org/emp/labour-force-participation-rate.ht...

[3] https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...

[4] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/civilian-labor-force.as...

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