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by atonse 884 days ago
I don’t dispute the 4% figure but isn’t that based on the % that claim unemployment? Like if you stop claiming it cuz you gave up you’re no longer counted right?

I remember reading something like that which made me question what that metric really means.

2 comments

"People are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work" from https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#unemployed

So if someone is retired, a student, a full-time parent, etc then they don't count as "unemployed" despite not working a paid job. If someone lost their job and wants a new one, and at least once every 4 weeks they check a job website or whatever, they'd still be counted.

How are they counted ? I don’t assume the government has metrics on clicks per person on website’s looking for job section with a timestamp
Read the methodology, it's all there.
This claim always comes up as a supposed flaw, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s the same metric over time. If you look at the unemployment rate now compared the past it’s very good.

Also, wages have been increasing faster than inflation since last January. I don’t think that would be happening if there was a labor surplus.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-i...