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One problem is that people between 55 and 64 can retire
no they can't. most of them haven't saved enough for retirement and cannot retire. only a quarter of people in this age group have enough assets to retire. most of them need that job to fund their expensive lifestyle of keeping up with the joneses, taking expensive vacations, and blaming their kids for their financial hardships.
no they can't. most of them haven't saved enough for retirement and cannot retire. only a quarter of people in this age group have enough assets to retire. most of them need that job to fund their expensive lifestyle of keeping up with the joneses, taking expensive vacations, and blaming their kids for their financial hardships.
Actually, the 70th percentile for household net worth for 55 to 64 is barely over $300K. Unless you have a public sector job with a defined benefit pension, very few people can afford to retire until they're forced out of the workforce. There is this myth that the country is stuffed full of wealthy people. The top-5% are doing wonderfully but a 60-year-old working stiff who doesn't have a public sector job is eating dog food if they're forced to retire.
The BLS has a very narrow definition of "unemployed". While that is fine when you compare that rate over time and see it shoot up in a recession, then slowly float down afterwards, I have not seen anyone calculate this simple ratio: number of people employed divided by total population.
I am using the number of employed persons by the BLS and the population age 18-64 by the census bureau as of year-end 2014.
One problem is that people between 55 and 64 can retire and I'm not able to locate that data. It would reduce the 26% figure somewhat. On the other hand, people are counted as "employed" even if they work just 5 hours a week, which is silly. People who work part-time but would like full-time work should be counted as 1/2 employed. So I think the early retirees and involuntary part-timers should cancel each other out. Round this off to 25% if you want. Point is, that is a HUGE number.
I think it is just absolutely terrible that 1 in 4 working age Americans does not have a job. While some are independently wealthy, those are very few in number. Some don't need to work because they live in a household with someone else who earns enough to run the household. That's not a large number of people.
The reason the official unemployment rate is so much lower is because it ignores people who are disabled, in prison, or unemployed but not looking for work. While I agree they are not in the labor force, it is nondebatable that they do exist and require resources.
Thoughts? Is 26% unemployment normal? Acceptable? Or disgusting?
if you want to invent your own metric and count those blocs, you are free to do so; however it will make you look uninformed when discussing the topic since the metric has been in place for a long time. With that said, with u-3 and u-6 approaching historic norms, then yes, this supposed 26% you have constructed will be in line with historical norms as usual. Why should it be disgusting that people can retire, live on single-incomes in their household, etc?
No, I was referring to breaking out by category those who are not in the labor force. I have the total numbers and that won't change by a category breakdown -- prison, homemaker, slacker, etc.
No, I said labor force participation rate, which is the ratio of the labor force to the total population. Retirees are not in the labor force but they are in the population. That is why the figure goes down when people retire.
The figure I used for the denominator is the population age 18-64 so that it excludes retirees (the mathematical equivalent of retired = dead). Granted not everyone who is 65+ is retired and some people under 65 are retired, which are numbers I am working on collecting.
The labor force participation rate is 63%, meaning that 37% of the 18+ population does not work. However, that figure includes retirees, and the retiree population is not small. It makes no sense to say "unemployment is 37%".
A significant percentage of the population between 18 and 24 are in school, and many of those may not be working at all. Graduate students who get fellowships or use student loans to finance medical school living expenses would also not be counted as employed, so this would impact some of the 22-30 population. Another significant percentage of this group will be mothers with young children who choose to stay home with them. At the other end of the spectrum are retirees aged 55-64, whether they are eating dog food or living high off the hog. There's also people who are wealthy who also choose not to work as well as people who aren't very well off at all who work "under the table".
I think that the biggest reason that the labor force participation percentage has decreased is that the boomers are reaching retirement age, and so many boomers retire at 62 when they can start collecting SS even if they're penalized for it.
I also agree with GeoffD about the unemployable underclass. I'm not sure that many of these would be employable even if there were millions of unskilled jobs available for them to work at ... most have other issues that make them unemployable.
Originally Posted by Happiness-is-close Another hilarious thread bringing up labor force participation.
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Originally Posted by Barney Oakwood
What's so hilarious about it? If labor force participation were 2%, would you feel good? Or would you be planting a garden because of massive starvation?
Someone would declare hilarity if the information refuted the propaganda that has provided by the Obama administration in an effort to make themselves look good and feel better.
Labor force participation is a very important metric. The fact is, there are not enough jobs in America to satisfy the needs of a population of 325 million people.
Someone would declare hilarity if the information refuted the propaganda that has provided by the Obama administration in an effort to make themselves look good and feel better.
Labor force participation is a very important metric. The fact is, there are not enough jobs in America to satisfy the needs of a population of 325 million people.
Your first sentence doesn't make any sense. might want to break that one up a bit.
The civilian labor force participation rate has dropped from about 66 1/2% in 2005 to 62 1/2% today. There is a long list of reasons why that happened. I'll list some:
* In the Great Recession, corporations trimmed an awful lot of deadwood. Those were unproductive, usually older workers who were both expensive and with obsolete job skills. An awful lot of those never re-entered the workforce. If they were married, they continued to sit on the sidelines since the only work they could get with their skill set and job history is low wage work.
* The "everybody is a unique snowflake" generation entering the labor force completely lacks the work ethic and 21st century job skills employers want to hire. Failed parenting. Failed school systems. Failed culture. The children of the Asian tiger parents are doing just fine. Junior is still sitting on his parents sofa playing video games and Junior's parents continue to enable it.
* The impact of automation.
* The impact of global competition.
* The permanent underclass problem. If you don't speak "American business English", can't write a coherent paragraph, can't perform even basic arithmetic, and you popped out 2 or 3 children by 2 or 3 different daddies, you're not going to get yourself onto a career track. Basically, we've written off the bottom 20% of the population as being unemployable.
CD won't let me rep you again, otherwise I would. You are so right about all of this. Things were easier for the "deadwood" in the past because the population was lower so less competition and there were fewer jobs needing specialized skills. The new economy has been very painful for this group and for the lazy in general.
This economy is great for people who work hard and bring something special to the table. Those who figure that out really never have a problem finding and keeping a good job; people who don't struggle.
Labor force participation is a very important metric.
for studying demographics, not for economics though.
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The fact is, there are not enough jobs in America to satisfy the needs of a population of 325 million people.
guess what, there never have been.
and I'm wondering why you advocating a sytem with enough jobs to necessitate for child labor
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