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by thatcat 3709 days ago
Hm, I wonder how they hack these numbers together. I just made up my own unemployment metric, absolute unemployment. A-U = Population - Employees. For US. A-U = 308 mil. - 140 mil.(1) which suggests there is about 55% of the population who are not currently employed. So, A-U - U-4 = the approximately 50% of the population who don't need jobs I guess.

1.http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001

1 comments

Population in that case includes children and the retired.

Albeit, I hate using the phrase "retired" here. Retired for most simply means the equivalent of someone being born into wealth retiring at age 0.

Anyway, there are around 75 million kids, so real figures are something like 40% unemployed. But a lot of people are working under the table, no longer in classical employment, etc.

Though hopefully the kids are also doing something as well besides just factory public schooling. Figure 1 in 4 is 14-18 and they might have some part time job, albeit unlikely.

There is a fundamental shift to consider, though. A hundred years ago regardless of employment figures most people were farming and by farming that meant the whole family worked together to eat and provide shelter for themselves, and raise enough money to buy that which they cannot provide to themselves.

>a lot of people are working under the table, no longer in classical employment

I suspect this isn't a choice but a result of labor saturating the traditional market.