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Comment by colechristensen | Hacker News Reader

>historically high employment rates

People will believe any statistic that aligns with their mindset.

Unemployment rates are at historical lows within a small margin, it's been 50 years since unemployment has been lower (i.e. something like 60% of Americans have not seen lower unemployment in their whole lives), and since the WWII war economy that they've been significantly lower (i.e. almost nobody alive).

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What's the difference between historically high employment rates and historically low unemployment rates?

(employment rate) = (employed people) / (total people)

(unemployment rate) = (people not currently working, but actively looking) / (total people)

The first includes all people, the second excludes those not working, but also not looking.

And, obviously, the employment rate is harder to game than the unemployment rate. There are long term trends that affect it (women entering the workforce, etc.), but it's an overall more stable and valuable metric to look at.

In Australia at least "unemployed" according to parliament: https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Depart...

"The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) defines a person who is unemployed as one who, during a specified reference period, is not employed for one hour or more, is actively seeking work, and is currently available for work"

So if you are desperately looking for more work BUT you have a casual job providing 1 hour of work THEN you are NOT unemployed. I mean, it's right there that you have a job.

Given the high rates of casual/part time work in our workforce, unemployment rates mean nothing to me anymore...

This is also true to a similar degree to how the US defines it. It's an important point, since a lot of people are arguably underemployed, but are still included in employed statistics. I just didn't want to get too far into the weeds of the definition and distract away from the point of how unemployment excludes people while employment does not.

Surely there's a Full Time Equivalent (FTE) employment definition somewhere to capture exactly this issue. But if there is, it never seems to come up in public discourse, possibly because it is difficult to understand or for people to directly relate to.

Or just look at employment, not unemployment data.

https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/labor-force-participa...

Historically high employment rates == historically low unemployment rates, right?

Not necessarily: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/discouraged_worker.asp

In the UK people sometimes make the claim that the unemployment rate the government is quoting is so low because people have given up even looking

Havent the calculations changed ?

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