It is strange how Americans accurately perceive what is going on despite VOX propaganda to the contrary:
40% of Americans are not in the workforce
40% don’t want to work
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/giving-up-40-women-28-men-39-youth-dont-want-a-job/article/2556177
Gee I am withholding comment on the matter until I hear from MIT professors.
The percentage of the adult population 25-55 working has plunged from 66% (the high around a decade go) to 58%. Around 10% of adults working are part time and want to be full time.
10% part time and 8% used to work but aren’t is 18% - roughly a third of 66%. So of the 2/3 of the population that was working a decade ago, a third are either unemployed or under employed.
So the perception isn’t unrealistic.
Americans responses are closer to the correct answer, because the FedGov Beast does not count people who are no longer looking for a job. “Not in labor force” probably does account for close to 1/3 of adults.
93,000,000 unemployed, on a population of what, 300,000,000.
Sounds about right actually.
That’s what happens, when America sends millions of jobs to China.
China grows. America shrinks.
Americans are so stupid. /s
You can double the employment rate just by splitting a 40 hour work week between two employees.
That’s a pretty good number since the labor participation rate is only 62.8 percent. That puts about 37 percent of the population out of the workforce. Take out the legitimately disabled and it is a good estimate.
US population 1/1/14 - 317 million
Labor force 1/1/14 - 154 million
Employed 1/1/08 - 144 million
DOL unemployment rate 1/1/14 - 7.0
US population 1/1/08 - 303 million (my estimate)
Labor force 1/1/08 - 153 million
Employed 1/1/08 - 145 million
DOL unemployment rate 1/1/08 - 5.4
Population up 14 million, labor force up 1 million? If it goes up 7 million, then unemployed goes from 10 million to 17 million and rate goes to 11.9. Not as bad as I thought, but still BS from the feds.
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2013/12/31/us-population-2014-317-million-and-71-billion-in-the-world
http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet
http://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table
If I am not mistaken, wasn't the unemployment rate about 25% during the Great Depression?
That’s actually a pretty accurate “gut-reflection” of reality, despite the fact that the article was written chiefly to mock the intelligence of the American public and lecture them about what “real” unemployment statistics are.
The fact of the matter is the current BLS U3 and U6 figures are farcical — in no way, shape or form do these highly selective and misleading yardsticks measure actual unemployment. In prior decades, before rules changes to how such figures are calculated and prior to the intentional redefinition of what constitutes “unemployed”, the unemployment figures put out by the BLS much more closely matched the realities of unemployment experienced by the American public.
Case in point, back in 1994 for the BLS defined long-term discouraged job-seekers out of the unemployment figures. Been looking for a job for too many months? Guess what?! You’re no longer unemployed! Isn’t that grand?
If we actually calculated unemployment figures as we did during the Carter administration, the current unemployment figures would be well above 20%.
But, there was too much incentive to politicize the process of collecting and reporting economic data. If you’re a politician, why worry about actually doing something difficult like ensuring that your cockamamie hair-brained populist schemes to get votes DON’T end up destroying the economy? It’s a hell of a lot easier to have your appointees in the BLS fudge the rules a bit to define-away more than half of inflation and unemployment, and get your sycophants in the press to lecture the public about how STUPID they must be to think unemployment and inflation are high.
Probably because only 68 percent (and maybe 64%) or so of those able to work are working - which leaves 32 percent unemployed by common sense math, unlike the heavily manipulated “real” unemployment rate number.
During the real Depression they used the common sense number and that only went to 26-28 percent. So this is Great Depression 2.0 on steroids.