[aatd86]

I'm always wondering when people speak about (un)employment. Like ok non-farm payroll numbers may look good but what kind of jobs, for what kind of pay?

Logically, employment may increase while people's standard of living may get worse at the same time?

Is there somewhere more specific data?

Other than that, I think I remember an article claiming that the introduction of thr personnal computers led companies to be able to generate the same revenue with less people. Like it used to be 8 employee per million USD and it got to 5. Then again, depends of the size of the average enterprise and the market size (which increases with population increase)

[FirmwareBurner]

>Logically, employment may increase while people's standard of living may get worde at the same time?

Yes it can and yes it is. I'm also baffled by people keep pointing out low unemployment like it's the be all end all of all arguments for economic prosperity.

Obviously sky high unemployment like in the great depression isn't great either but just because people are forced to accept any one of the abundant gig economy jobs, no matter how shitty, or even more than one job, due to the high CoL and low welfare, it definitely reduces unemployment numbers on paper, but is that ideal?

Maybe some jobs are so shit that people would rather bum around on minimum welfare than get dirty, tired and aching bodies just to only to make peanuts over welfare.

Maybe the median inflation adjusted take home wage of the employed person after subtracting essentials like rent, utilities, bills and food, would be a better metric to measure economic prosperity of the working class than collectively clapping at record low unemployment numbers.

[alexwhb]

So true. And unemployment doesn’t take into account disenfranchised workers, which is significantly higher than it has been in recent history.

[xnx]

What's the measure of disenfranchised workers? I couldn't find any good source.

[alexwhb]

I believe the technical economic term is “discouraged workers”. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.

This is a useful resource on aspects not included in the unemployment metric: https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0609/what-the-un....

[xnx]

Ah, thank you. Found some useful links here: https://www.bls.gov/cps/lfcharacteristics.htm#discouraged

Seems like this measure of discouraged workers is down over the past 10 years: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS15026645

[alexwhb]

I now remember what metric I was thinking of… participation rate. There was a charter data storytelling post about it a while ago that I’m not able to find. But apparently participation rate on the workforce are down. I don’t remember what time scale. But I believe that metric includes discouraged workers as well as people who have retired. But I believe the angle the article I read was talking was a post pandemic look… like lots of people retired early. I believe this has those numbers.. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm

Here’s a chart: https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...

I think this metric, like unemployment, is obviously nuanced and also could be showing an aging demographic and other such subtleties.

[salawat]

That would be the basis measurement of the population of working age people not requesting and or not eligible for unemployment benefits, champ.

[impossiblefork]

Unemployment mostly has to do with matching and coordination problems.

AI or increases in labour supply doesn't typically result in reduced unemployment, rather it acts to push down wages. An increase in labour supply could even lead to people bidding over each other with time, so that the result is that people work more rather than less.