Unemployment Rate at or Near Record Lows in Half of US States | Hacker News Reader

Unemployment Rate at or Near Record Lows in Half of US States

bloomberg.com

22 pointsMilnerRoute11 comments

Meanwhile the labor participation rate still hasn't recovered from before the pandemic. This is a propaganda piece.

Nor is it ever expected too a bunch of people retired that are unlikely to come back to the workforce... I don't understand what your point is.

Yeah, it goes both ways. People stay unemployed for all different types of reasons. Still not everyone that stopped working was due to age. The point is unemployment rate is not a strong or consistent indicator of economic health. Taken by itself, it doesn't tell you much about the economy. This article would have you believe it's a very good thing, but it tells you more what the publishing group wants you to think than about the economy.

As the unemployment rate measures the percent of workers in the labor force who do not currently have a job but are actively looking for work, people that give up 'actively' looking are not considered part of the unemployment rate. On its own, the unemployment rate is a fairly useless number on its own. The rate can halve and still be bad for the economy as a whole.

It's not the whole picture, but it's far from useless. There are a myriad of different unemployment metrics. Some of them include people who have given up looking. However, all of these metrics are highly correlated. It's very rare for one to move without the others moving proportionally.

The labor force participation rate being down is just an indication that the population is aging and people are retiring. If you look at the prime age labor force participation rate, it's at the highest point in more than 20 years and very close to an all time high[1].

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

Don't forget about people who got long-term illnesses due to the pandemic, and those family members who now have to care for them.

Reminder that you only count as unemployed if you are actively searching for a job, at least for statistics purposes. Low unemployment is often caused by people just giving up on their job search. In fact, rising unemployment is associated with improved economic conditions as people start searching for a job again. Unfortunately this fact is often omitted from discussions on unemployment statistics.

Jobs appear to be lost in interest rate sensitive business hubs. Regions that thrived on tech and real estate are going close to recession levels on unemployment.

No surprise there. Begs the question: Are those jobs good for an economy or are they just fluff.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/laus.pdf

https://archive.is/Qp0wS

Don't know about US, but in my country registering as and maintaining unemployment status is true acrobatics with a paltry payback. Unemployment offices are some weird self-serving fortresses.

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