The real unemployment rate is 26% (wages, benefits, work, definition)
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So, in other words, the above average people either have a job, or if they get laid off, can find another job easily. The below average people can just get lost.
The below average people used to work on the farm or in a factory. Since illegals or machines work the farms, and factories have moved overseas, what are we supposed to do with the below average people? We can't afford to put all of them on welfare.
I recommend deporting all illegals and put a tariff on imported goods. The very low skilled can work on farms and the lower skilled can work in factories. Let's make "Made in America" a goal and reduce the U6 rate to 5%.
The fact that the U6 rate is DOUBLE that of the U3 rate is disturbing.
THe average person would or will be stuck at their job, an above average person, highly skilled, with certificate liscense, or graduate from a top school can obtain a job one after another. A below average person is going to have a hard time finding a job due to his age, lack of experience, skillset not in demand, poor economics, criminal rapsheet and other nuances will price them out of the job market.
The OP asked: How many people do you know who are homemakers? I don't know of anyone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by randomparent
Seriously?
I really think it depends on your socioeconomic class. If you live in the land of 5%ers, you'll know tons of families where they have the wealth to drop down to a single income and focus on raising a family. If you're in working class housing and work an hourly wage job, that's unlikely to be your experience. Everybody works because it would be challenging to pay your bills without having two incomes even factoring in daycare costs.
I know several stay-at-home dads with high income wives.
Unemployment is great if it is voluntary. You have to be brain damaged to want to be employed especially in the jobs down the food chain.
More employment means that we, as individuals, are more dependent, we have neither time nor ability to do the things that makes human life worth of living. Most of the job creation revolves around our depravities. More jobs means more human misery is commodified.
In the long run, the most productive, smartest, hardest working employees will probably be the ones that keep jobs. But we don't live in Lake Wobegon, and not everyone can be above average. Millenials are no less and no more capable than any other generation, and to hang the blame on them is a lazy and unhelpful.
I don't think it's that Millenials are "lazy". They're the most affluent-ever generation and that creates a set of very unrealistic expectations. Everybody rants at boomers but boomers grew up in much more modest times. Think about the major family-oriented shows and the level of affluence. Mayberry was a poor hick town and the family lived off a cop income. The houses in My Three Sons and Leave It To Beaver were tiny. Dad wore a suit to work but you didn't have luxury cars, vacation homes, and glitzy vacations.
From personal experience, I see an awful lot of bright kids of my 5%er friends who flunked out of college and are now drifting aimlessly. I think that it's mostly that they grew up too damned affluent to have the consequences of failure drilled into them.
The rebaselined SAT scores also tell a big chunk of the story. SAT verbal scores dropped because very basic reading comprehension and writing skills are no longer being taught very well. The brightest kids with engaged parents in the good school systems are doing fine. The average kid, not so much. In a time where every millenial is facing global competition, it's pretty clear that mainstream education has gone in the wrong direction.
I don't think it's that Millenials are "lazy". They're the most affluent-ever generation and that creates a set of very unrealistic expectations. Everybody rants at boomers but boomers grew up in much more modest times. Think about the major family-oriented shows and the level of affluence. Mayberry was a poor hick town and the family lived off a cop income. The houses in My Three Sons and Leave It To Beaver were tiny. Dad wore a suit to work but you didn't have luxury cars, vacation homes, and glitzy vacations.
From personal experience, I see an awful lot of bright kids of my 5%er friends who flunked out of college and are now drifting aimlessly. I think that it's mostly that they grew up too damned affluent to have the consequences of failure drilled into them.
The rebaselined SAT scores also tell a big chunk of the story. SAT verbal scores dropped because very basic reading comprehension and writing skills are no longer being taught very well. The brightest kids with engaged parents in the good school systems are doing fine. The average kid, not so much. In a time where every millenial is facing global competition, it's pretty clear that mainstream education has gone in the wrong direction.
60% of mellinials grew up in broken homes and a massive chunck of us came from immigrant backgrounds that were FAR from affluent.
For boomers, the Leave it to Beaver lifestyle was the norm. Mellinials grew up with so much more chaos.
The youngest Millennials are still in high school. It's a bit too soon to make sweeping statements about their generational characteristics.
Correction: The youngest Millennials, who were born in 2004 according to Strauss & Howe, are not even in middle school yet, so it's DEFINITELY too soon to start making sweeping statements about them.
Last edited by randomparent; 01-15-2016 at 08:03 AM..
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?
That's basically civilian labor force participation rate, not unemployment rate. It's fairly normal, yes. At its highest, civilian labor force participation rate was 67.3% and is currently 62.6%. A lot more young people aren't working because they're getting an education. Usually the types of jobs students had are the ones we're now calling for a $15/minimum wage for, flipping burgers and the like. Stay-at-home moms is also increasing, combined with the new emergence of stay-at-home dads.
It really doesn't bug me at all. As long as people aren't on welfare, I don't particularly care if they work or not. That's a personal decision. If they don't want to work because they're focusing on school and the employment opportunities aren't that great or so they can be a stay-at-home parent or just stay-at-home wife/husband, I'm fine with that. The only part of it that does trouble me is trying to turn jobs for teenagers and college students into de facto careers. Part of the reason students aren't working is because those jobs are now taken up by people working them as careers instead of part-time jobs while they improve themselves. Again, I'm fine with that but not in conjunction with using the government to enforce a paradigm shift to substantially higher minimum wage. Index it to inflation, fine. Double the minimum wage in a short time frame? Not fine.
The youngest Millennials are still in high school. It's a bit too soon to make sweeping statements about their generational characteristics.
Correction: The youngest Millennials, who were born in 2004 according to Strauss & Howe, are not even in middle school yet, so it's DEFINITELY too soon to start making sweeping statements about them.
this is the same argument ive been making all along, but it falls on deaf ears because you can't teach an old dog(most boomers) new tricks. pretty much every generation hates the younger generation before it. call it human nature I guess.
I think we're just now starting to get a handle on the Gen-Xers, who are hitting their career stride and raising their children, the youngest of the Millennials. I have Millennial children born in the late nineties and very early aughts. These are kids who have yet to vote in their first Presidential election. There's still a lot of life ahead of them, and it will be a couple of decades before we know who they really are and what effect they've had on our world.
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.
The Great recession was, in the long term, a blip in labor force participation rate (much like prior recessions). There is a long term decline in labor force participation because of . . . wait for it . . . an aging population.
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