Comment by AceJohnny2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AceJohnny2 | Hacker News Reader

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How is "unemployment" defined in the US? Take those numbers with a grain of salt.

In France, you were counted as "unemployed" if you were registered with the national employment agency and actively looking for employment according to their criteria.

If you didn't find anything (for example because the opportunities on offer were too far away, or various other reasonably human reasons) after a certain time, the agency dropped you, and you were no longer part of the "unemployed" statistic. Unemployment went down!

I've also seen the government there change their criteria for unemployment (for example dropping you after 9 months instead of 12), to make it seem like unemployment went down.

(I'm a big believer in statistics-driven policies, but statistics, like anything involving humans, can be corrupted)

That's very astute of you. The GP was talking about a rate called U-3, but the U-6 rate is far more descriptive. U-3 is what is generally used as the quoted rate, because it severely minimizes actual unemployment, allowing the Federal Government to use false statistics. [1]

[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

I'm glad someone else got on this soap box today. Folks will bend over backwards to justify the U-3 rate when it's not that meaningful at all.

It's extremely meaningful. It measures those who are unemployed. U-6 counts underemployment and people not actively searching due to an "economic reason".

Even regardless, the current U-6 rate is very close to the record low: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE

The US uses a large-scale survey for unemployment rather than tying it to the unemployment process. The official definition most people quote is based on responses to the survey of "have not worked recently, have looked for work recently" but there are also broader measures of unemployment that count people who want to work even if they haven't looked, as well as people working part time who want to work full time.

Using even the broadest measure of unemployment[1], numbers are back down where they were before Covid. The labor force participation rate is still down though[2] which means that about 2% of US adults aren't looking to go back to work at all- many of them are likely now retired, students, or stay-at-home parents.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART

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