{"id":178212,"date":"2019-02-06T21:25:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T02:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/02\/06\/perspective-on-the-unemployment-numbers\/"},"modified":"2019-02-06T21:25:00","modified_gmt":"2019-02-07T02:25:00","slug":"perspective-on-the-unemployment-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/02\/06\/perspective-on-the-unemployment-numbers\/","title":{"rendered":"Perspective on the Unemployment Numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It doesn&#8217;t feel like historically low unemployment, and one of the reasons why is that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/unemployment-vs-involuntary-part-time-work-underemployment-2019-1\">involuntary part-time work is also at an all time high<\/a>, and the standard U-3 measure does not count them:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Britain just notched up yet another record-breaking low for unemployment, according to the government. Unemployment stayed at just 4%, while the number of people with jobs rose to 32.54 million, or 75.8%, &#8220;the highest since comparable estimates began in 1971,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ons.gov.uk\/employmentandlabourmarket\/peopleinwork\/employmentandemployeetypes\/bulletins\/uklabourmarket\/january2019\"> according to the UK&#8217;s Office for National Statistics<\/a>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">But once again, the monthly jobs tally eclipsed how that miracle was achieved. &#8220;Headline&#8221; unemployment is only at a record low because of a <i>42% increase in the number of people who are in &#8220;involuntary&#8221; part-time work<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: blue;\">&#8220;Involuntary&#8221; means they&#8217;re only working part-time because they cannot get a full-time job.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In March 2006, at the peak of the economic boom that preceded the great financial crisis, involuntary part-time work was at a low of 620,000. It rose to a peak after the 2008 crisis. But today, after 10 years of economic growth, it has settled back to 881,000 \u2014 an increase of 42% over the period, according to the ONS.<\/p>\n<p>This is not good news.<\/p>\n<p>Four percent unemployment is technically &#8220;full employment.&#8221; Anyone who wants a job should be able to get one. But 881,000 workers need full-time jobs \u2014 the kind that get people out of poverty \u2014 and those jobs are not available.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I have a feeling that this is a feature, not a bug.<\/p>\n<p>The politicians get to crow about success, and the captains of industry still don&#8217;t have to pay a fair wage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It doesn&#8217;t feel like historically low unemployment, and one of the reasons why is that involuntary part-time work is also at an all time high, and the standard U-3 measure does not count them: Britain just notched up yet another record-breaking low for unemployment, according to the government. Unemployment stayed at just 4%, while the &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[392,450,494],"class_list":["post-178212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-economy","tag-employment","tag-statistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178212"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}