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by xeromal 589 days ago
I mean I just meant a low paying job. During COVID which even have more oversupply, I was bored and I was drive around doing doordash and other delivery services even though I had my tech job. There is always a surefire way of making one or two thousand a month here in the states if you're properly motivated.
1 comments
johnnyanmac 589 days ago
You underestimate how bad the job market's been the last 2 years.

And no, 1k a month is under minimum wage in my state. It's not even covering my mortgage, which is much cheaper than rent.

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angoragoats 588 days ago
Not sure what you mean. Job growth is continually rising, and unemployment continues to remain at historic lows (where it has been since 2021-ish). [0]

The job market is doing just fine, unless you’re in very specific areas such as the automotive industry or certain types of manufacturing.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2024/10/04/nx-s1-5140039/labor-market-jo...

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johnnyanmac 588 days ago
These charts use "employment" in a very pedantic way. They don't look much at underemployment nor the shifts in proportions of salary ranges.

I believe they also count gigs. So I could run Doordash for under minimum and be "employed" technically.

The other dangerous thing is "averages". This is one of the special cases where you need to look at the lower quartiles. The average/median can look great, but if we have an entire quartile unable to pay rent we'd be in trouble as a whole.

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angoragoats 588 days ago
To be clear, I was only responding to your first statement about “how bad the job market's been.”

You can click through to the BLS survey to read more about their methodology, but the job growth number of +254k jobs in September only includes payroll employees. And reading the report would tell you that they do, in fact, track underemployment (people who worked part time but would have preferred full time employment). And neither job growth nor the unemployment rate has anything to do with “averages.”

Can you provide any data to refute the numbers I shared? Because again, the job market is looking pretty good to me.

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pooper 581 days ago
> Can you provide any data to refute the numbers I shared? Because again, the job market is looking pretty good to me.

This is why everyone hates economists. They have zero insight into how lives are for ordinary people. I applied for a job at grocery stores and fast food restaurants. I did not get ONE call back from any of these places.

Also another thing -- they keep saying rate of inflation is now under control. Well guess what, the prices went up and have not come down. Wages did not keep pace with the high rate of inflation so unless you can have negative inflation somehow, there is still constant pain every day, every month. I mean it is so obvious and yet economists chase spherical cows...

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angoragoats 581 days ago
> This is why everyone hates economists. They have zero insight into how lives are for ordinary people. I applied for a job at grocery stores and fast food restaurants. I did not get ONE call back from any of these places.

I understand your frustration with your personal situation, but at least regarding unemployment, how else would you propose we measure it? Unless there's some flaw with the methodology or the data that was collected, your situation is very clearly not the norm. Until we identify any possible problems with the measuring process, the number that's released is the best view we have of the employment situation nationwide. Are you saying that "ordinary people" are somehow excluded from the data? Or what?

> Also another thing -- they keep saying rate of inflation is now under control. Well guess what, the prices went up and have not come down. Wages did not keep pace with the high rate of inflation so unless you can have negative inflation somehow, there is still constant pain every day, every month. I mean it is so obvious and yet economists chase spherical cows...

The rate of inflation is under control, and I realize you might know better and are just speaking for "the average person," but comments like this reflect a gross misunderstanding of the concept of inflation. This is a perfect reason why education is so important to an informed and effective electorate.

BTW, you can, in fact, have negative inflation, and it is widely considered to be bad, for a multitude of reasons. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation

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