Recent College Graduates Face Higher Unemployment Than Other Workers - for the First Time in Decades (msn.com) 160
"A growing group of young, college-educated Americans are struggling to find work," reports the Minnesota Star Tribune, "as the unemployment rate for recent graduates outpaces overall unemployment for the first time in decades."
While the national unemployment rate has hovered around 4% for months, the rate for 20-something degree holders is nearly 6%, data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows. [And for young workers (ages 22 to 27) without a degree it's 6.9%.] The amount of time young workers report being unemployed is also on the rise.
Economists attribute some of the shift to normal post-pandemic cooling of labor market, which is making it harder for job-seekers of all ages to land a gig. But there's also widespread economic uncertainty causing employers to pull back on hiring and signs AI could replace entry-level positions....
Business schools nationwide were among the first to see the labor market shift in early 2023 as tech industry cuts bled into other sectors, said Maggie Tomas, Business Career Center executive director at Carlson. Tariffs and stock market volatility have only added to the uncertainty, she said. In 2022, when workers had their pick of jobs, 98% of full-time Carlson MBA graduates had a job offer in a field related to their degree within three months of graduation, according to the school. That number, which Tomas said is usually 90% or higher, dropped to 89% in 2023 and 83% in 2024.
Part of the challenge, she said, is recent graduates are now competing with more experienced workers who are re-entering the market amid layoffs and hiring freezes... After doing a lot of hiring in 2021 and 2022, Securian Financial in St. Paul is prioritizing internal hires, said Human Resources Director Leah Henrikson. Many entry-level roles have gone to current employees looking for a change, she said. "We are still looking externally, it's just the folks that we are looking for externally tend ... to fulfill a specific skill gap we may have at that moment in time," Henrikson said.
Economists attribute some of the shift to normal post-pandemic cooling of labor market, which is making it harder for job-seekers of all ages to land a gig. But there's also widespread economic uncertainty causing employers to pull back on hiring and signs AI could replace entry-level positions....
Business schools nationwide were among the first to see the labor market shift in early 2023 as tech industry cuts bled into other sectors, said Maggie Tomas, Business Career Center executive director at Carlson. Tariffs and stock market volatility have only added to the uncertainty, she said. In 2022, when workers had their pick of jobs, 98% of full-time Carlson MBA graduates had a job offer in a field related to their degree within three months of graduation, according to the school. That number, which Tomas said is usually 90% or higher, dropped to 89% in 2023 and 83% in 2024.
Part of the challenge, she said, is recent graduates are now competing with more experienced workers who are re-entering the market amid layoffs and hiring freezes... After doing a lot of hiring in 2021 and 2022, Securian Financial in St. Paul is prioritizing internal hires, said Human Resources Director Leah Henrikson. Many entry-level roles have gone to current employees looking for a change, she said. "We are still looking externally, it's just the folks that we are looking for externally tend ... to fulfill a specific skill gap we may have at that moment in time," Henrikson said.
What do you expect? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've had significantly better luck hiring people who want to learn on their own, and providing them everything I can to help.
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Recipe for success?
I've had significantly better luck hiring people who want to learn on their own, and providing them everything I can to help.
This is all well and good, but how do you know who to interview? You either need personal recommendations, or you go entirely off their resume. The part about hiring good people is obvious, but it's also obvious that absent the recommendation, you can't tell anything about how good they are. That's why something that is probably not that much of a discriminator becomes so important for someone who has very little work experience.
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Recipe for success?
I've had significantly better luck hiring people who want to learn on their own, and providing them everything I can to help.
This is all well and good, but how do you know who to interview? You either need personal recommendations, or you go entirely off their resume. The part about hiring good people is obvious, but it's also obvious that absent the recommendation, you can't tell anything about how good they are. That's why something that is probably not that much of a discriminator becomes so important for someone who has very little work experience.
Yes, networking is an important job skill. Even if many people in here don't like the idea.
New graduates should be looking at entry level jobs. Of course there isn't much to go on in regards to the person, but finding out is just part of the entry level process.
One way to winnow out the wheat from the chaff is give the interviewee a problem to solve. In my current employ, I was asked to provide a my thoughts and ideas about a big problem they were having. So I went to it, did my sit quietly for a few
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I don't believe that new hires should be looking for entry-level jobs, unless you mean the sort of jobs that basically require a college degree in order to even do the entry-level work.
The two things that college education were supposed to provide were either the foundation of education for being a leader, or the foundation of education for research. The latter has morphed into all sorts of disciplines, particularly into engineering, but the former still applies to an extent. If the job is truly entry-lev
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I don't believe that new hires should be looking for entry-level jobs, unless you mean the sort of jobs that basically require a college degree in order to even do the entry-level work.
Yes, I'm not talking about working at the drive-in window at McDonald's I'm talking about say a programmer looking for a programming job. Let's look at it this way. Should a new freshly graded bachelor's degree person be looking for a job as lead programmer or department head?
I do understand that many kids starting out believe they are qualified for such jobs, But there are the people who've worked for years at the place, and are fully qualified to be lead programmer or department head. What do we tell t
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I would expect this article to not spread misinformation. This isn't a new trend. In January 1993 unemployment for all workers was 48% higher than recent grads, but by January 2003 it was 17%. The gap spiked again after the great recession, but unemployment for recent grads has been the same or higher than all workers since late 2018. Before the pandemic or ChatGPT's release (the main culprits in the article).
This has little to do with anything on your list. This is the simple result of too many of the jobs
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Recipe for success?
I've had significantly better luck hiring people who want to learn on their own, and providing them everything I can to help.
The "Quick Study" group is what you are talking about. I'm not certain if this is uncommon - it probably is. It takes intense curiosity about a lot of subjects, and deriving endorphin hits from fixing problems, plus a decent memory.
But it you find one, you scoop them up.
Where I "retired" from we had EE and ME students doing paid internships, and that was very popular. The students got a lot of practical experience, which turned out to be very valuable for them. Unfortunately, we couldn't take on all those who were interested.
And pay rate. Yes, there has been an issue since the millennials entered the workforce with recent graduates wanting to start near the top. Don't shoot the messenger folks,
Today there is the additional issue of GenZ kids bringing in other problems in addition to the demand for top pay.
And that isn't something I'm making up. A quick search of the web with "GenZ workers getting fired" shows an alarming trend. Problems with poor communication skills, lack of professionalism, bad time management, lack of organization, and having no idea how to dress for work. Look up "office siren". A phenomenon where young ladies dress for the office as if they were going to a club. Especially in the post meetoo era, where men are extremely avoidant of anything that might be distracting or reek of sexualization or objectification in the workplace.
That's just one example, the males tend to dress way too sloppily, sometimes looking like they are homeless.
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Problems with poor communication skills, lack of professionalism, bad time management, lack of organization, and having no idea how to dress for work.
Well what did you expect when you gave them the internet as a babysitter? Actions have consequences, and that particular one is going to be with us for quite awhile. Best get to actually addressing those issues unless you want your business to be inundated with employees of such caliber. (The older "proper" employees won't be around forever.)
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Problems with poor communication skills, lack of professionalism, bad time management, lack of organization, and having no idea how to dress for work.
Well what did you expect when you gave them the internet as a babysitter? Actions have consequences, and that particular one is going to be with us for quite awhile. Best get to actually addressing those issues unless you want your business to be inundated with employees of such caliber. (The older "proper" employees won't be around forever.)
What I expect is having some concept of how to act at work. And you are correct about actions having consequences. At both ends however.
I do want the GenZ kids to do well. But they have to help in that effort. Much of what is needed is pretty simple. Show up on time for work and meetings, speak intelligently and clearly (I don't know why so many mumble) and dress appropriately. Then understand what is work and what is not work.
But what is concerning is that schools are apparently not teaching that so
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1. Make college very expensive
Most public universities aren't that expensive. UCLA, for example, is $15,700 per year. Is that worth it? Well, let's consider what you get-- UCLA runs on the quarter system (10-week terms plus a week for final exams) and your average student takes 4 classes per quarter at 3 hours per week. That's approx. 396 hours of direct education or examination per year, so if you want to break it down to the simplest cost-per-hour for education, it's $40/hour. Of course, there's much more expense that goes into the ed
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Where I find the most egregious expense is in the cost of housing **in most large cities**. All around these **cities**, you'll find a mass of investors (big and small, corporate and mom & pop) who buy up all the housing, turn it into rentals, and crank up the rent at every single opportunity. Food and housing is expected to be around $20,000 for a **resident in these large cities** this coming year-- and "housing" implies a shared bedroom among other shared bedrooms of an apartment or house.
Fixed that for you.
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Yeah. I dunno. When I was an undergrad, we didn't have Google and the like. Hell, the card catalog was useful technology. We did have word processors, thank god.
As for "shitload more classes", I'm kinda doubtful. Isn't an undergrad degree still about 130 credits? Unless it is substantially more than that, there isn't a shitload more classes.
I'm not buying your comment about 300 level classes and working either. I was taking 500 and 600 level classes and working, fairly recently. Can you state and cite an
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I had four to five classes per semester and they had six to seven. I know because I paid for them.
Basically on top of the usual Gen Ed stuff my cat had all their undergraduate work and a whole bunch of additional undergraduate work and a couple of classes that were on the job training. The on the job training really stung because I paid thousands of dollars for something that when I was a kid you got paid to do. But that's modern corporate Americ
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Cats aren't known of accurately choosing workloads. Cats also generally loaf about laying in the sun. So extra training is needed for them to be able to perform jobs which requires the services of special trainers who are expensive to employee.
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Cool made up story bro. Maybe try sticking to just one topic instead of jumping around with your fantasy writings.
There's new AI you can have freely proofread your rambling so it will be somewhat coherent for someone who isn't off their meds.
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Good for you and your kid, I wish you the best. Although it's a bit of a stretch to generalize your single data point on to the whole society. But you are also missing his point. Yes you are right that a degree opens up many doors. That does not invalidate his experience hiring people. The shitshow is real, and it's real in more ways than what we are personally aware of.
The fact that college requires a lot of work does not go one step towards proving that the work is meaningful, nor that anything learned is
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Kids work harder now than we did. They're going into a world that demands more out of them and gives them much much less for it. And it's the world we created for them.
We are leaving them a shit sandwich and rather than face the misery and guilt that goes with that we just tell ourselves that it must just be fine somewhere somehow.
One
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"In exchange for this you will get access to substantially more money than if you didn't go to college."
No you don't. You have a CHANCE to access that.
The problem is there are much more college graduates than jobs that warrant that "substantially more money".
The hardest hit are those with certain arts or humanities jobs -- at least as far as pay. a BA/BS just isn't going to win you that 6-figure pay to allow someone to pay off their student loans unless you planned your major very well.
To be fair, some of
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Remember all those plumbers can only make money if we build new cities which we stopped doing. You don't make money as a plumber you make money running a plumbing company. To do that you need a growing population with new cities otherwise the market gets saturated. And you end up stuck working $20 an hour for somebody.
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I don't think people really realize and I don't think they can cope with the reality that our entire civilization that we grew up with is gradually breaking down. We stopped doing the maintenance on it in the 80s.
That's not what's happening.
We went from about 1 billion people from which to draw a pool of educated labor, to about 3 or 4 billion today depending on how well you think India is doing. All else being equal, you should expect a 66-75% decrease in income. The fact that inflation-adjusted income stayed relatively flat is already a good thing, that means as we gained more workers, we're able to find additional work for them to do.
The other thing making college difficult is the fact that our pool of knowledge
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Yeah I know there are plumbers out there running their own businesses but if you're not running your own business you top out at $20 an hour. The same goes for welders unless they are doing crazy dangerous shit.
Average salary for a plumber in the US is $29.52, or $61,570/year.
Average salary for a welder in the US is $23.42, or $48,847/year.
It's like nobody here can Google anymore.
If by "here" you meant "your house", you are completely right.
That no-job requirement for a 300 level course is total bullshit, as you know since you don't bother naming the college or giving any kind of support to the ridiculous claim..
Hiring only experienced engineers (Score:2)
with at least 15 years experience with OpenAI.....
Re: Hiring only experienced engineers (Score:2)
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Keep up the good work.
They manufacture the panic; many try things out and when something sticks enough they run with it. They don't even need anything to find and distort anymore; just make it up and if lucky, they can ambush somebody who will stay the wrong thing when responding unaware of the narrative setup around the absurdities. Trans has been a problem for some time with it being such a tiny nothing it hardly gets noticed but it resonated more at this time so it became a crisis.
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How about addressing anything else I said? You picked out a single line in a long post you felt was weak
I didn't pick out a line I felt was weak. I picked out a line I felt was heinous. Something is wrong with you.
Hating people is much worse than feeling like a woman. Don't be a hater.
How about this one: how does a man know what it really feels like to be a woman?
There are plenty of youtube videos that talk about this if you actually want to know the answer.
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Hating people is much worse than feeling like a woman. Don't be a hater.
He is way smarter than you, just not sane or well adjusted. There are many medical conditions that blur gender identity, making blanket statements for political points is hateful and ignorant.
Like that new party, what's their slogan again, more luney than looney.
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He is way smarter than you
Yes he is.
There are many medical conditions that blur gender identity, making blanket statements for political points is hateful and ignorant.
I don't care if you disagree with people who are trans. I don't care if you're smarter than me. But if you hate them, then you're wrong.
Change, don't be a hater.
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He is way smarter than you
Yes he is.
There are many medical conditions that blur gender identity, making blanket statements for political points is hateful and ignorant.
I don't care if you disagree with people who are trans. I don't care if you're smarter than me. But if you hate them, then you're wrong.
I think there is an issue that needs addressed.
That there are people with gender dysmorphia is a given. Always has been, in my work on campus, even way back in the 1970's there were men dressing as woman and women dressing as men. even a few who found it necessary to amputate body parts.
I never saw a reason to hate on them.
But in recent years, it is not unreasonable to believe that there has been overreach. Deciding that public schools have the final say in who is what, and that they can start tr
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The problem is when you go around hating people. Don't do that.
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However if you go around hating trans people, then the problem is you.
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ok, it sounds like you have opinions on certain policies, although you probably don't understand them entirely and should do more research. But basically there's no problem with that. I don't expect you to be omniscient and I'm not.
The problem is when you go around hating people. Don't do that.
My personal policy is that as long as they aren't doing harm, a person should do as they will. And teaching tolerance is a better idea than teaching children that they are probably the wrong sex and need to change to the other - that gets kinda dicey.
But a group of people deciding that little children need to be told they were born the wrong sex have overreached. And their tactic of taking children, and encouraging them to transition is an ethics issue. And it can lead to harming the child.
The psychody
Re: Hiring only experienced engineers (Score:2)
"Once is enough."
So, when did you stop hiring white males?
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Don't be an asshole.
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Oh yeah? What search did you use to find all these violent trans people? Why haven't they been arrested if they are committing violence? Don't be an asshole.
I think it is saying that they get violently angry. not they have committed violence. I've watched a few of those videos, like the one person who says he is going to kill anyone who has an issue with him using a woman's bathroom. Was it a specious comment, or even a fake trans person? I dunno. It's why I don't include that in my assessments. But I've watched threats of violence.
And really, all manner of people make and sometimes act on threats, straight, gay, male, female. It would be surprising if trans
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Yeah, they all want long years of experience. Job requirements are nothing more than a pipe dream, and they always were. When they really need to hire someone, they'll take somebody that checks off 50% of their wish list items.
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Many moons ago when you applied for a job it was the engineers who looked over the resumes. Today you have to make it past the HR department. It’s especially tough if you don’t have a degree. A good engineer can talk with someone for a few minutes and see if they’re competent or just full of shit. HR won’t pass you along unless you’re that unicorn matching every requirement to a T.
Re: That's like when.... (Score:2)
If you don't hire entry-level workers now... (Score:2)
... where will you find experienced workers seven years from now? Seems like someone's making a really big bet on AI improving a whole lot soon. And when the next AI winter comes, a lot of people will be paying a lot more for the workforce they need.
Re:If you don't hire entry-level workers now... (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, before we panic, the grad unemployment rate is 6%. That's still very, very low by historic standards. It means that if you're a college grad, you have to stand out more than the bottom 6% of your peers, to get hired. A 94% chance of success still seems pretty darn good to me.
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I mean if you're an engineer and you're pushing carts at walmart...you might be employed; but it's not anything your degree helped with. How many of those people aren't included.
The size of peers vying for the same job just increased...many of those peers stand out from the recent college grads just by the fact they've got experience. Would I hire the recent college graduate or the guy with 15 years experience. They're both willing to work for the same money. I'm going with the guy with the experience. That
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College grads in many fields have long had to find whatever job they could, even if it wasn't in their field of study. I don't have that statistic, but this article certainly doesn't prove that it's somehow more inflated than before. Most likely, it's inflated by the same percentage as the unemployment rate itself, which is 50% more than general unemployment. Even if that's true, the odds of being unable to find work in your field, is still pretty small, unless you're unwilling to move or make other changes
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The guy with 15 years experience is NOT looking for the same salary as a college grad. That's not how the market works.
The guy with 15 years experience who is currently employed or recently unemployed is not looking at jobs with entry-level salaries.
The guy with 15 years experience in an industry with a declining number of jobs who has been unemployed for 6 months and is staring down a foreclosure and upcoming necessary medical/dental bill is absolutely looking at jobs that pay entry-level salaries.
That is exactly how the market works. You can't just look at the supply side.
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At zero point did anyone claim this only affects the tech sector, nor was there any mention of 6 figure salaries, you made that up in your head. You took a $30K pay cut, which in most industries would put you at or below entry level wages. The healthcare sector recovered faster after covid than most industries, it definitely wasn't representational of what is happening today.
Believe what you want, but you are absolutely ignoring reality and your own experience.
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I've lived through far worse recessions than this.
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I hate DOGE as much as you do, but it's not what's causing our unemployment rates to climb, unless you are a Federal worker. The US workforce is 168 million, in that context, DOGE has (at most) eliminated about 280,000 jobs. That would add about 0.17% to the unemployment rate.
The recessions in the early 80s had very little to do with Reagan, and much more to do with the Iranian revolution (which affected oil prices) and Paul Volcker's unwillingness to keep interest rates high enough. https://www.investopedi [investopedia.com]
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I hate DOGE as much as you do, but it's not what's causing our unemployment rates to climb
Not my point. DOGE has had significant effects on the availability of the research dollars that support grad students. That prevents recent college grads from going to grad school the way I did after my undergrad degree.
The recessions in the early 80s had very little to do with Reagan, and much more to do with the Iranian revolution (which affected oil prices)
The Saudi oil embargo and the advent of OPEC had the biggest effect on oil prices in the 70s.
and Paul Volcker's unwillingness to keep interest rates high enough.
It was Arthur Burns, Volcker's predecessor, who failed to raise rates on time to quell the inflation of the 1970s. Volcker raised rates to 20% to stop inflation. It did, but caused a nasty recession
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This article and this discussion, is about the availability of jobs for grads, not the ability of grads to become grad students. Except for certain fields (like yours, or like medicine), grad school isn't really about getting a job. It's about research and teaching. In computer science (my field), a graduate degree rarely leads to a better job, and conversely, I find that programmers with advanced degrees, aren't that great at developing software. They're more about theory than practice.
You're right, Presid
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A grad student with a research or teaching assistantship has a job. My point is that such job opportunities, which have helped many people get through recessions, are no longer available because of the cuts that Trump/DOGE has made. Many universities have had to tell accepted applicants that that their offers have been rescinded. See, for example [boston.com].
grad school isn't really about getting a job.
I would guess that you have never been to grad school.
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I would guess that you have never been to grad school.
You conveniently left out my caveats.
My point was that college (and graduate degrees) are not primarily vocational. They have vocational schools for that.
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Let my competitor hire them and then I'll hire them from him in seven years.
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You expect MBA morons to think 7 (!) years into the future? They can barely manage 6 months. On a good day.
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This is the vision for the future (Score:2)
Rightly or wrongly, this absolutely mirrors what Republicans are saying now. The value of a college degree is degrading and there is a dream to bring masses of labor jobs back to America. The answer is that people stop going to school and just accept that their future lies in a steady 9-5 making iPhones in a factory. Or replacing the hoards of illegal migrants who are due to be deported away from their low paying jobs. Of course none of those Republican politicians, lobbyists, lawyers or their corporate fri
Re:This is the vision for the future (Score:4, Funny)
Almost. The value of a four year degree in any majors is degrading. Community college and skilled trades are doing well. I didn't see a single AI or robot at work when the local town was putting in new water tower.
Not a single AI or robot was helping when the Well #3 pump failed and the operators had to replace it. Certified Water Operator is a real thing by the way and legally required in all Group A water systems. A four year degree is not needed for that.
The pruning crew in the orchards around me were entirely human as well.
The AI was bright enough to take the indoor office jobs in the air-conditioning and leave the humans doing the dirty jobs. I think you programmers just may have messed up. :-)
Is Mike Rowe hiding somewhere laughing his ass off?
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Don't worry, the skilled trades will be devalued as well. They already are.
Companies just don't want to pay proper wages and will make every lame excuse they can to justify it.
Most people who work full time struggle just to pay rent.
Re: This is the vision for the future (Score:2)
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Because I've done the kind of work Rowe wanks off on. It's mockery even if he's sincere.
What's the hardest dirtiest work you've done for any sustained period of time?
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I've done that kind of work and it is beneath me.
so....you haven't been listening (Score:3, Insightful)
People on the right are NOT saying there's no value in ANY college degrees and that people need to be prevented from going to college and get forced into menial labor jobs. NOBODY is saying that. It's apparently the product of your fevered imagination.
What people on the right HAVE been arguing is multiple related things that are bit more complex than you can apparently handle.
1. Obama's federal takeover of college loans was a BAD idea and implemented VERY BADLY. He effectively made it so any kid could borro
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WHY do YOU PEOPLE tend to WRITE like THIS? I generally see this style of writing in media that caters to uneducated numbnuts, e.g. far right rags like the British daily express.
"you people"? (Score:2)
Please clarify. It's impossible to answer such a question without more info.
Somehow I suspect the question was intentionally incomplete and unanswerable, because you sought no answer and just wanted to rant and fling insults. "numbnuts"? "far right rags"? Yeah, those are clues.
Next time don't bother unless you have something intelligent to contribute. Insults and expletives don't count.
wrong? (Score:2)
What, exactly was wrong? You had the perfect opportunity to answer some specific point with a contrary fact, but instead you just waved your hand and announced the entire post as "so wrong" and then tried to further dismiss my post as "talking points".
The term "talking points" actually means something; it's traditionally been a list of things to say (often excuses, misdirections, or quasi-answers) that are handed out by some political entity to supporters who might otherwise be left standing there with noth
Lazy (Score:2)
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Mom's not working at IBM and unable to arrange a lucrative deal, pap not owning a gem mine might be a part of the reasons.
Source for the non-degrer statistic? (Score:2)
Does anyone have a source for the non-degree holding unemployment rate being 6.9? That's a very interesting piece of the puzzle.
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I wouldn't hold my breath, because this entire article is rubbish. This isn't some new phenomenon. Unemployment for recent college graduates and for all workers have been neck and neck since 2014, and unemployment for recent grads has been slightly higher almost every month from late 2018 to mid 2022, when it started to grow noticeably higher than all worker unemployment. This isn't because of a post-pandemic cooling off period or AI, it is a trend that started in the 1990s with a hiccup just after the grea
"College for everyone" is failing (Score:5, Insightful)
Too many graduates, not enough jobs. People going into debt for worthless fluff degrees but even the STEM degrees have a surplus now.
All of that when the trades have a shortage of trained people.
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Too many jobs require a degree, and the automated systems won't even let you apply if you don't tick that box.
Companies complained that they needed skilled workers for the modern economy, but they don't want to pay for them, and they definitely don't want to train them. A degree isn't supposed to make you fully competent to do some specific job, it's supposed to give you the foundation and skills to learn the job.
Now we have AI too, with bosses figuring they can just churn out AI slop and have some experien
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Care to guess what's going to happen next?
All of those trades suffering shortages are suddenly going t
A 94% chance of getting hired (Score:2)
So, a 6% unemployment rate means that, if you want to get hired, you have to stand out more than the bottom 6% of candidates. I'll take those odds any day!
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So yes, each unemployment rate metric has a different purpose, each of which is legitimate and not invented to make politicians look good.
Let's take your lowest percentage, 83%. That still means that you only have to beat out the bottom 17% of graduates, to get a job IN YOUR FIELD. I emphasize this because the placement rate wouldn't include those who got jobs outside of their chosen field, artificially lowering the percentage.
As for companies ignoring everybody but the top 10%, that doesn't jibe with your
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A good point, but it also means your wage will be slightly lower than if the employer didn't have as much alternatives to hire.
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This is true. Essentially, you're saying the job market is no longer white-hot, and that wages will be less than stellar. That's a lot different from being depressed.
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I'd like to see stats based on 100% of able-bodied, not-on-mat/pat leave, working-age, non-incarcerated people wanting to work, and then measuring the percentage of a standard work week per capita.
Total hours being worked divided by total available labour-hours.
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You should also exclude spouses who choose to stay home with the kids, and caregivers.
The broadest measure of unemployment, U-6, is at 7.7%, still a healthy number. But focusing on this number incorrectly negatively skews high, when the context is the difficulty of finding work.
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The labor force participation rate considers retired people as unemployed, unless they are institutionalized. This inappropriately skews the statistic higher, especially as the number of retirement-age people increases. https://www.investopedia.com/t... [investopedia.com]
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No, retirees are part of the labor force, when calculating the labor force participation rate. From the same article:
the retirement of a steady stream of baby boomers has reduced labor force participation
https://www.investopedia.com/t... [investopedia.com]
Your use of the 37.7% figure incorrectly inflates your understanding of unemployment, because you have understood that number to exclude retirees. It does not.
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You are correct about the definition of labor force.
The result, however, is that because retirees are part of the denominator, the percentage expressed as the labor force participation rate, is lower when lots of people retire.
Yes, it was Anonymous Coward who posted the 37% figure, which is the percentage of people not working, in the LFPR, and also not a reasonable number to focus on when discussing unemployment.
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There are 6 different unemployment rates tracked by the BLS, each has a different purpose and shows unemployment through a different prism. That doesn't make any one of them a "lie"--you just have to understand the nuances and the context.
Whichever nuanced metric you prefer, the number of unemployed people in the US is very small. And there are valid arguments to exclude people who aren't looking for work. You know, couples who start having children will make a conscious decision for one spouse to stay home
Let's implement Medicaid slavery (Score:2)
There's a housing crisis isn't there? Homes are no longer within affordable range for young people. So why can't we use these unemployed graduates to build housing? The new medicaid law says you have to work 80 hours a month to be eligible for medicaid .. so why shouldn't we couple that with an employment guarantee? Offer people work building new housing developments, elderly care, city street cleaning, and critical national infrastructure. Pay low wages but cover medical and basic meals on the job. Offer o
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Second, use the 13th a slavery loophole to pay them $0.25/day to build homes that will be owned by private equity.
Third, after releasing them when they're of no further value, deny them healthcare for a "preexisting condition" they acquired in prison.
Fourth, when they're so old and broke they can no longer work, enforce work requirements as a condition for paying for long term elder care facilities.
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Modification of #4:
Euthanize them. It'll cost the government less money then enforcing the work requirements.
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$140k and in livable condition, not a mobile home? What state do you live in?
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The state of widespread unemployment and low paying work.
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That's very cool. Unfathomable in any California town.
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Thanks for making that list. Forwarded to some people who can benefit by that knowledge.
Get degree in medical field (Score:2)
Whole corporate knowledge work system is a sham (Score:2)
This is why knowledge workers need 0. unions and 1. employee-owned co-ops to ensure their fair recompense and economic stability.
SocioEconomicCollapse in progress (Score:2)
Once again more evidence to suggest were in the final few years of this civilisation. Everything is going according to plan.
Wait for it (Score:3)
All these college grads who can't find jobs will in many cases start their own businesses. We've seen this cycle happen in the past. Except they will be leaner and more effective by leveraging AI/ML from the start and will operate without all the corporate baggage of C-suite staff with bloated salaries.
Even with great AI tools, you need competent people who can use them, and I'd suggest the young folks are going to have an advantage there. The companies that compete in the race to the bottom are sacrificing long term growth for short term gains in the name of making a quick buck.
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