Why America has 8.4M unemployed when there are 10M job openings

washingtonpost.com

1 pointfspacef5 comments

A "job opening" only exists on paper, until it's filled. An "unemployed person" exists on paper and reality, no matter what.

Are the incentive structures wrong in the middle layer between supply and demand? Typically, the hiring process is a bureaucratic PITA. In an ideal world the process is like Tesla's. One page. Three detail entry fields to fill. Reply in three days.

The orthodox answer is the lower classes don't want to work. And need to be starved and threatened more.

I think the orthodox answer is that there's a lot of incentive for making the economy look like it's doing better than it is.

I've noticed that old discussions of the US economy talked about things like how many million tons of steel and concrete were produced. The number of houses and cars produced. Electric power generation per year.

Now all economists are interested in is GDP and the rise in nominal real estate, stock and bond prices. And they don't care about the things I mentioned above. Or things like 95% of real estate investments are for existing stock.

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