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Comment by laidoffamazon | Hacker News Reader

This is statistically incorrect. The percentage of multiple jobholders is still lower than before the pandemic [0]. This is despite the prime age labor force participation rate being the highest since like 2002, and higher than it was before the pandemic in January 2020 [1]

You should reflect on why you feel this way despite the facts painting a very different picture.

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060

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It's not statistically incorrect. KPIs are generally discussed in time frames, year over year, quarter over quarter. There is year over year growth in multiple jobholders, three years running. That constitutes a strong trend, even if regressing to the mean. Also, if you're not filtering your multiple jobs data to prime age, you should use aggregate participation rate (unfiltered), which tells a different story.[0]

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART

It's prime age because our population pyramid is balanced towards people that are likely to retire about now anyway. The prime age is far more relevant.

And for the record, the year over year growth should indicate that it's not the negative economic signal OP implied it was, since the economy was otherwise weaker during the bottom of the metric!

Comparing pre-pandemic is arbitrary and doesn't make sense, some people have been needing multiple jobs for a long time now

If you factor money supply increase, current minimum wage is like $3-4 per hour compared to pre-pandemic.

Do you mean people are being paid $3-4? Or is there a word (more?) missing?

2019 $7.5 per hour is roughly equivalent to $4 per hour today.

Your claim is that inflation in ~4 years is almost 90%?

The claim is money supply debasement, which is related to but not directly aligned with consumer price index (CPI) which only measure inflation for some theoretical "average" consumer based on some bucket of goods, services, and assets that increase or decrease in cost at sometimes wildly different rates.

CPI is pretty crap, but another model that shows almost 90% inflation in ~4 years seems even more suspect.

$7.5 an hour? Is it still that low in places? Around here, the lowest you will see is $17/hr.

Adjusted for inflation, $7.25 in January 2009 (when it was last set) has the equivalent purchasing power of $10.36 in March 2023. I live in a part of the country where many jobs pay $9-10 an hour despite rent being $600/month for a room.

That’s cheap. Around here, even the lowest of the low apartments (complete slums) are just shy of $2000 a month.

https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

$7.25 in March 2023 has the equivalent purchasing power as $6.05 in January 2019.

Less than 1% of workers are making minimum wage.

A person making $0.01 more than minimum wage is technically not making the minimum wage. Citing the percentage of people who make exactly the minimum wage is not a compelling argument for how many people are affected by it.

That is technically true, but pragmatically, anywhere close to minimum wage is a joke these days, people just won't work for $7.25 or $7.26 an hour anymore in most places.

Even in Vicksburg Mississippi, where I lived for a bit as a kid, a poor place, although not Yazoo poor, McDonalds is starting at $11/hour now.

> If you factor money supply increase, current minimum wage is like $3-4 per hour compared to pre-pandemic.

Yes, if you start with a dumb premise, you come to a meaningless conclusion.

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