Unemployment rate hocus-pocus (cartoon)

[whatthehey]

25. Of course suggested alternatives are either a) already given or b) fucking stupid

What about people whose benefits have run out? Already in the headline declining U3 if looking for work just once in a month. Benefits have ZERO ZIP NADA impact on being counted in any U- rate.

What about people who have to work part time? Already covered in U6, also declining.

What about people who haven't looked in a couple months for contrived extreme "reason" X, Y, Z? Already covered in U5, also declining.

What about people who haven't looked in a year? They are not fucking unemployed workers, they have not the slightest interest in working. If you can't get off your arse to apply once in a whole fucking year what's the difference between you and a non-worker like a homemaker by choice or a trust fund dilettante? If you make not a single effort to find work in a whole year how can you in any sense claim to want to, and be able to, work (I'm sure many profoundly disabled folks want to work,but just can't, and they are thus not unemployed workers either, but out of the workforce entirely)? There are no jobs? Bullshit - there are over 5 million openings. You might have to find something else to do other than underwater welding in Boise ID, but that doesn't mean there are no jobs, just no jobs that fit your narrow self-imposed limitations. I'm not doing the kind of work I started doing, or in the same state I started in. There is no immutable right to the same career in the same town if you really want a job.

What about the LFPR! That proves it's all smoke and mirrors! Except the LFPR is based on anyone out of jail or the military who is over 16, two years before graduating HS, with no upper limit. More kids stay in school? Good thing, but LFPR goes down. More go to college? Ditto. More people hit retirement (gosh that's a surprise 60-odd years after a massive baby boom eh)? Yep LFPR goes down. Those darned 68 year old retired ironworkers with decent pensions but pain-wracked bodies are really unemployed? They should be working or looking for it? Few would say so but they are in that LFPR just like my 80-something Emeritus Prof father in law who retired a decade or more ago. He is shadow unemployed? Like hell.


Oh and I notice the old canard about "seasonal adjustments are just manipulations to make things look better" isn't coming up much now the unadjusted rate is lower. It's OK doomers, come winter you can start using that bullshit again too.