Politicians have so many tools in their bag of tricks. For example, there is the "unemployment rate" and the "jobless rate." The former only counts people who are "actively looking for work" while the latter purports to count anyone without a job.
The current unemployment rate among men 25-54 is 4.1% -- about average since 1960. However, the jobless rate among the same group is 13.1%. It's only been that high three other times since 1960, and all of them near the end of significant recessions.
Some jobless people are jobless by choice, but how many men do you know in that category? Has it he number risen significantly in the past year?
This is another worrisome sign that the economy is not in good shape, and a reminder that the politicians will paint any pig red and call it a rooster if they think even one person will believe it.
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3 comments:
instead of focusing on the number of men out of work some of which some choose to do so, why not focus on thier education?
I'm not sure I understand JB's comment as it pertains to original statement. But I went to school in Ohio so that could be me. Anyway, I think that the statistics surrounding unemployment are only the tip of the iceberg here. What doesn't get measured is the loss of jobs in the what many call the "underground" economy. Most of these people are immigrants (illegal or legal doesn't really matter). They work construction, landscaping and other jobs they'll do for less money than their native born counterparts. We all know who they are. The housing industry goes in the dumper and unemployment doesn't go up? That's because many of these people aren't in the system that measures such things. They are, however, unemployed nonetheless. I guess what I'm saying here is that unbeknownst to those that do the measuring, there is a fairly large cohort of people have lost their jobs and that this will have a big impact on the country as a whole and a very big impact on the areas with large populations of immigrants.
I think his point is that education will save you from being jobless, but there are a lot of well-educated comuter programmers who lost jobs to outsourcing to India. Are they at fault?
Many of the people Bird refers to pay SS but will never drawn benefits.
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