Anybody who believes ~30% of the workforce was functionally unemployed in 1999 does not know what those words mean, or was not an adult in 1999.
I get what they are trying to convey, but the stronger message is the more straightforward: there are too many jobs that do not pay enough to live on.
xbmcuser 26 minutes ago [-]
For me the true problem which most countries dont even acknowledge is low wealth and capital gains tax. Salaries are not enough because of land prices and the prices inflation it causes through out the economy. You bring down price of home land rent then price of everything else comes down. And their is a lot more economic activity as trillions of dollars are not parked in real estate for wealth generation.
jaredklewis 4 minutes ago [-]
A land value tax would fix rich people parking money in real estate. A wealth tax or capital gains tax would not.
lkirkwood 9 minutes ago [-]
Is capital gains / wealth tax a fix here though? Definitely not saying it doesn't work, I have no idea. But I'd be curious to hear both sides of the argument.
sandworm101 9 minutes ago [-]
Or you tax it. Or, more correctly, you remove the current protections that allow land to appreciate tax-free for decades. That would move capital out of land and free it for other uses. The current system was designed to put money/people into houses post WWII but has gone too far in promoting radical multi-generational wealth structures.
We already assess property each year for purposes of local property taxes. Treating a 10% rise in value as taxable income each year would shake up the real estate market. Speculative gentrification would certainly stop. And those sitting on empty houses would either sell or try to find renters.
seibelj 27 minutes ago [-]
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ElProlactin 43 minutes ago [-]
> ...or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $26,000 (in 2025 dollars) annually before taxes.
I couldn't easily tell how they decided on a $26,000 "living wage" figure but in most of the US, even double that is not Easy Street.
The "True Rate of Barely Getting By" is ridiculously high in the US from what I can gather.
BLKNSLVR 18 minutes ago [-]
Might need to change the labelling from 'living' wage to 'surviving' wage.
bpodgursky 3 minutes ago [-]
This number is before transfers, you really cannot just look at the raw income. A family of 2 adult 2 kid making $22,500 in raw income makes more like $48,700 after refundable tax credits, SNAP, housing, etc [1].
They conflate "living wage" with desire for full time work in this metric. It also seem to so closely track the official unemployment rate as to not be useful.
Also, as others states, 26k is a surprisingly low number to be called a living wage. I think that number also varies depending on household make up, but I can see why they skipped that complexity.
zkmon 22 minutes ago [-]
> the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job ...
What is the "U.S. labor force" defined as? Is it a age group thing?
hirako2000 14 minutes ago [-]
It is typically who is able to be part of the labour force.
remove the elderly, those for who it would be illegal to work or still engaged in formal education, the so significantly handicapped no work is manageable.
It all depends on the definition of "Unemployment". Most governments do not count you as unemployed if you've stopped looking for work, been unemployed for over 6 months, or if you made $25 as an Uber driver for 1 hour's work that month.
wxw 32 minutes ago [-]
> the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $26,000 (in 2025 dollars) annually before taxes
Seems like reasonable criteria. "Regular" unemployment is
# unemployed/# employed
where unemployed is they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior four weeks, and are currently available to work. But not much criteria in terms of what work people are finding.
j16sdiz 13 minutes ago [-]
Looking at the "True Rate" vs "Headline Rate" graph....
The "Headline Rate" seems to be a good proxy for the "True Rate".
As long as we are not comparing them in the absolute term, what's the problem?
riffraff 8 minutes ago [-]
an unemployment rate of about 3-4% is considered "full employment" aka "we're good".
If you switch the perspective to this other rates it shows there's a lot of work to do to reach "true full employment".
skybrian 60 minutes ago [-]
I see some odd effects. I wonder how these would be explained?
According to the headline rate, unemployment was about the same in 1995. According to this alternative measure of unemployment, it's gone down by around 8% overall.
When split by race, it's gone down the most for Hispanics.
By education, it's gone down the most for people who didn't complete High School.
xeromal 45 minutes ago [-]
Just a guess but gig work might be picking up some of that slack?
SpicyLemonZest 37 minutes ago [-]
State level minimum wages were much less common in 1995, so it was easier for workers to be below their poverty threshold. Even though the federal wage got stuck, in many states today, the minimum wage is high enough that it's not possible for a full time worker to make less than $26,000 in a year.
1 hours ago [-]
54 minutes ago [-]
SpicyLemonZest 40 minutes ago [-]
This definition sounds like U-6 unemployment (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE) with an additional term for people making below a living wage. That's better constructed than most of these "real stats" I see, so I hate to be too critical. But they don't really engage with the important question of whether this metric is sufficiently robust for policymakers to use. Just eyeballing it, it seems to be quite a bit more volatile than the headline rate; if the Fed tried to target it, for example, would they end up doing a bunch of unnecessary rate cuts to stave off unemployment spikes that aren't real?
mc32 1 hours ago [-]
I don't see the revelation, it still appears we're near historical lows and it's not spiking. It's not like there is any divergence between before and now. It's not bad to know what this rate is but it's also not revealing a lie. If you apply their stat methodologies to other G-7, you get similar results.
hirako2000 11 minutes ago [-]
The revelation is that the official unemployment rate is so skewed it is meaningless, even misleading since high unemployment is a serious social issue thus should be a high priority political concern.
gehwartzen 47 minutes ago [-]
Just because the economic system we have has always been shitty for a high percentage of our neighbors doesn’t mean it always has to be that way. Other top economic countries being similar doesn’t excuse it.
Jblx2 34 minutes ago [-]
If you do this with PPP with every other country on earth, which ones look the best?
Helloworldboy 35 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 05:11:38 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I get what they are trying to convey, but the stronger message is the more straightforward: there are too many jobs that do not pay enough to live on.
We already assess property each year for purposes of local property taxes. Treating a 10% rise in value as taxable income each year would shake up the real estate market. Speculative gentrification would certainly stop. And those sitting on empty houses would either sell or try to find renters.
I couldn't easily tell how they decided on a $26,000 "living wage" figure but in most of the US, even double that is not Easy Street.
The "True Rate of Barely Getting By" is ridiculously high in the US from what I can gather.
https://www.google.com/search?q=average+us+income+including+...
They conflate "living wage" with desire for full time work in this metric. It also seem to so closely track the official unemployment rate as to not be useful.
Also, as others states, 26k is a surprisingly low number to be called a living wage. I think that number also varies depending on household make up, but I can see why they skipped that complexity.
What is the "U.S. labor force" defined as? Is it a age group thing?
remove the elderly, those for who it would be illegal to work or still engaged in formal education, the so significantly handicapped no work is manageable.
So it is an age group, with caveats.
It all depends on the definition of "Unemployment". Most governments do not count you as unemployed if you've stopped looking for work, been unemployed for over 6 months, or if you made $25 as an Uber driver for 1 hour's work that month.
Seems like reasonable criteria. "Regular" unemployment is
# unemployed/# employed
where unemployed is they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior four weeks, and are currently available to work. But not much criteria in terms of what work people are finding.
As long as we are not comparing them in the absolute term, what's the problem?
If you switch the perspective to this other rates it shows there's a lot of work to do to reach "true full employment".
According to the headline rate, unemployment was about the same in 1995. According to this alternative measure of unemployment, it's gone down by around 8% overall.
When split by race, it's gone down the most for Hispanics.
By education, it's gone down the most for people who didn't complete High School.