Originally posted by: CycloWizard
Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper
I'm not sure anyone has the real numbers, but I'm pretty certain that the alleged 4.7% is far too low based on my observations of the world around me and all of the newspaper headlines I've read about mass layoffs and whatnot over the years.
So your anecdotal experience supercedes the government agency whose sole job it is to compile these statistics? And I'm the noob? K.
Yes, I take my anecdotal impression of the situation based on having read a horde of newspaper articles and having heard many news reports about subjects related to the economy (mass layoffs, etc.), the monthly jobs numbers, and also the application of the logic underlying global labor arbitrage applied to the nations economy much more seriously than numbers that have, in all probability, been politically massaged, especially when, as I have shown, those numbers are necessarily bogus to begin with.
I'm sorry I called you a "noob" for your having taken the reported unemployment rate seriously, but I was looking for a more diplomatic term than "moron".
Perhaps you missed the news report? If the government's number of a loss of 4000 jobs for the month is to be believed or even merely somewhat accurate, it means that the nation lost about 150,000 jobs, +/- a couple ten thousand, relative to the increase in the size of the working aged population.
Unemployment rate at 4.7%? I don't believe it. You're going to need to show me lots of evidence to convince me that it is even in the same ballpark as the real number.
Also, having such a low unemployment rate defies the logic of global labor arbitrage--when you send millions of jobs overseas, when you fill jobs at home with foreigners on work visas and with illegal aliens, it has to have a negative effect on the employment rates of Americans.
Ah, so now we get to the heart of the matter. You've decided that outsourcing and illegal immigration imply a high unemployment rate, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. This is what doctors like to call "jumping to conclusions." Why not try letting the evidence dictate your conclusions rather than vice versa?
Why don't you put forth an economic argument to explain how global labor arbitrage will not result in a decreasing quality of life and less material wealth for most Americans? So far no economist or commentator has been able to convincingly do it, and if they had been able to, you can bet that the media and the politicians would be shouting it from the rooftops. Perhaps you've decided that hard work guarantees economic success in life and that the American economy will continue to chug along bringing prosperity to anyone with a solid work ethic, rationality, and half-a-brain?
Could you explain how a near-sudden increase in supply relative to a relatively static amount of demand results in increased prices? Why wouldn't that decrease prices on a supply-and-demand curve?
I'm not exactly sure how the underemployed and poverty-wage-employed should be counted. I wanted to point out the fact that people who are severely underemployed can be counted as employed to back up my point that the unemployment numbers don't tell us about the real state of the job market or the economy.
But you were the one who came in this thread and tried to use employment as some indicator of economic flux. Now you're saying the exact opposite.
Yeah, when the government relents after, presumably, working hard to massage the numbers and releases a report saying that the nation lost jobs during a month, it strikes me as being a rather notable event.
If we had ideal numbers, then we would know what percentage of Americans are employed at various income levels. We might then consider the number of people who are completely unemployed plus the number who are employed in poverty wage jobs and treat it the way we currently treat the unemployment number.
Why would you do that? If I have a job, I'm not unemployed. Period. By definition. If you want to start a new "underemployed" index, by all means do so. But you can't call someone with a job unemployed - it's just wrong.
I don't see any reason why we should not count someone who can only find low wage work for 10 hours per week but who would like to work for 40 hours per week as unemployed. I don't know exactly how many hours a week such a person would need work or how low the wages would need to be to count them as unemployed, but for all intents and purposes, such a person is unemployed as far as I'm concerned.
I would say "No" because the airline pilot is still earning a good income. In general usage, the term "underemployed" also implies that one who is underemployed is earning a significantly lower income that what he would earn if he were properly employed.
I have a masters degree in engineering and I make $18,200/year. Am I underemployed? Underpaid maybe, but certainly not underemployed (grad student
). Your problem is that you want to use labor statistics as an indicator of economic health, but now you've given numerous reasons as to why that's a bad idea. Instead, you've switched to your anecdotal evidence and tried to pass it off as the one true indicator of the state of things. That's just not how it works.
I said that I don't regard the unemployment number as it is currently calculated as being reliable. I'm skeptical about the labor statistics as well because I suspect that the Administration and its Bureau of Labor Statistics will try to massage the data to make it look more favorable.
That having been said, I'd still like to see a real unemployment rate, an unemployment rate plus a severe underemployment rate, and an unemployed + employed-at-poverty-wages rate. In fact, I'd love to see stats detailing what percentage of the working-aged populace is employed at various compensation levels. Would you have a problem with that?
I don't have an estimate of the percentage of working-aged Americans who are either involuntarily unemployed or working in poverty wage jobs, but I suspect that it's a high number, at least 20%.
Don't forget to wash your hand before you eat. In fact, you should probably wash all the way up to your elbow after pulling something like that out of your ass.
You're right. It's just my opinion. That's why I qualified it with the words "I suspect".
Regardless, I've made a solid case that the use of the "unemployment number" as a measure of the health of the nation's economy and job market is fallacious for reasons that you haven't and can't refute.
Yes, that's your point now that you edited your OP that originally said the exact opposite. Isn't that convenient?
I don't remember exactly what I edited, but it was probably a grammatical error. What did the original first post say that the current post doesn't say? You say that my post said the exact opposite? Opposite of what?
The only thing I can think of that I might have edited would have been to add this part, but I think I put that in the original post:
How could reporters miss that crucial fact? Did anyone read any news reports or hear any reporters mentioning that the nation also needs jobs to keep up with population growth? Is it that reporters are unaware of it because economists (who should know better) are purposely misleading them by failing to mention this key fact, or is it that reporters are concerned about setting off a panic amongst the public?
Or are you talking about a later post?