89.8% Of Americans (Who Want Jobs) Are Employed

[MannyGoldstein]

We, the Uber-Bankers of America, just want to point out that fact, as we know that most non-bankers can't do math.

Thanks for giving us so many of your tax dollars. Trillions!!! Trillions!!! You'll get some back when you sell us your kidney or something, OK?

And please keep laughing off Krugman and that looney-left crowd - sure, they said unemployment would hit 10% with a stimulus package that was tiny compared to all of the loot you gave us, but don't the sails on our yachts look real pretty as we sail past your shanty towns?

Keep up the pom-poms kiddos! Go team!

Best,

Hank, Larry, and Timmy

[FBaggins]

1. Untrue

89.8% of those who want jobs and haven't given up looking... and have some job skills... and are available to work... and have looked in the last x weeks... are employed.

Though many of them are working part time though they need full time employment... and many are working at lower salaries than they job skills used to justify.

[Tansy_Gold]

2. You forgot

those who are working two jobs and get counted twice

or working three jobs and get counted thrice




Tansy Gold, who is somewhere amongst the uncounted

[FBaggins]

4. No... that's not one of the problems.

You can only be counted once on the household survey. You're either employed, unemployed, or not in the work force.

[MannyGoldstein]

3. Oh... You're a Nattering Nabob of Negativism

Those "people" you refer to are actually bodhisattvas that have gained the enlightenment that work is for suckers.

[quiller4]

6. What many ignore are those who have put off retirement. These

are boomers who planned to retire in late 2008 or 2009 but saw the values of their defined contribution retirement plans and 401Ks drop when markets tanked. This is the first really large group to reach retirement age where only a small percentage have defined benefit plans that would have been unaffected by the market drop.

These are people who are still working but would much rather not be. This number is significant. Some major corporations saw fewer than half the retirements they planned for in 2009. I read an article in a regional business journal where a personnel administrator said that in a "normal" year, his Western region experienced 1800 retirements. So far in 2008 fewer than 200 had retired and conversations with her peers in the industry confirmed for her that this was a national phenomenon spread across industries.

As the market recovers more of these folks will retire. Some economists who predict a sharp drop in unemployment in the first quarter of 2010 are looking at these delayed retirements.

[FBaggins]

9. True. IIRC, that's where we got Social Security

The Great Depression spawned similar circumstances. Older workers holding on to jobs because they couldn't afford to retire (a far less common concept at the time).

Roosevelt created Social Security not just to provide an income for the elderly... but also to get some of those elderly to give up their jobs and retire - clearing those positions for younger workers who had been unemployed for some time.

I wonder how much of out current unemployment rate is accounted for by older workers who would have retired in the last two years but simply can't afford to now?

[slampoet]

11. Also you forgot that the ENTIRE military is counted as employed......

....yet mercs who are looking for work are not counted as unemployed.

[FBaggins]

12. Isn't that how it should be?

Since one actually is emloyed and the other isn't?

The alternative is to count active duty military as out of the workforce... So the net impact isn't all that great.

[slampoet]

16. The military was NEVER counted until Reagan needed to up the figures before the 1984 election

[FBaggins]

17. I'm not sure where you got your information...

...but they aren't counted now.

I was just saying that they probably should be counted (regardless of who had the idea) because they are, in fact, employed.

The change during the 80s didn't really add the military to the official unemployment calculation, it created a new alternative measure that included them. Nobody paid attention to it and it was never widely reported. It would also make only a small difference, since the armed forced would be added to both the numerator and denominator of the calculation.

[mia]

5. Some people don't want to work.

At least 10.2%. I've known a few myself.

"For the grace of God, so go I.'

[Merlot]

7. And don't forget that "employment" is all that matters...

if it's a part time, minimum wage job with no benefits, well, that STILL counts as employed in our book!
(in fact, that's kinda the goal for all jobs)

[FBaggins]

10. Depending on the measurement, that's correct.

But both statistics are reported... so it isn't as if they "hide" it.

The harder measurement is accounting for the $60k/yr worker now making half of that doing something else (gut still full time).

[RedCloud]

8. Others exluded from consideration:

Housewives
Students
Prisoners
Underemployed
Frustrated
Rehabilitating
Handicapped
Forced into retirement
Feral folks
Slaves
etc.

[Toots]

13. The actual figure is 82.5% once those people that have run out of benefits and still can't find work

are figured in. Basically two out of every ten people you meet can't find a job and could be on the verge of desperation..In my heart I feel like 75% percent of the blame for this lies with Republicans..

[FBaggins]

15. That's not how it works

Though it's a common misperception, the end of benefits has no impact on whether or not you are counted as unemployed.

The survey doesn't even ask whether you are getting unemployment.

[Greyhound]

14. K&R.

The facade is getting pretty shabby.