Great work. I will add a few points to supplement this essay.
1. The Bureau of Labor Statistics would brought under the administration by Obama. It used to be independent. In July they over reported jobs created by 800,000... a record error. They had to walk it back but the corporate media had already pained a rosy picture for the Biden Administration in an election year.
2. The government reports the U-3 measure as the unemployment rate. It is currently about 4%. But the U-6 measure is the REAL unemployment rate because it factors those working in part time jobs, those with more than one job and those that have been discouraged and dropped out of looking for a job. That rate is about double the U-3.
3. There are 330 counties in the US, about 1,200 communities, that are considered labor surplus areas. The real U-6 unemployment rates for those communities is way in the double digits. For certain demographics like youth, male and black... they are much higher... in many cases being 50% or higher.
4. There is another disingenuous report of an increase in small business starts. However, 82% are non-employee small businesses... just people needing a Schedule-C for their 1099 gig economy work because they cannot find a job with an existing company.
You are correct. The private economy is not creating enough jobs to meet the needs of the citizens. The oversupply of labor compared to the undersupply of good enough jobs has put downward wage pressure on the remaining jobs. Meanwhile government has continued to increase the pay and benefits of public sector workers, thus creating a huge disparity in total compensation between public and private sector... and at the same time creating a huge merit disparity between private and public sector as the greater competition for work in the private sector has resulted in much higher capable labor. Government workers are overpaid and underqualified compared to the private sector. It is time for a reset.
Fantastic feedback! Thank you. I had not realized BLS was previously independent. That makes sense why the reporting has been the way it has been recently.
I also appreciate you calling out the U-6 rate. I'm thinking of doing a deep dive into part-time employment because it obviously doesn't get the headlines full time layoffs do.
Based on a couple of part-time jobs I interviewed for locally, I think the part-time labor market has cooled off significantly. This is important because in times of economic stress, workers will look to supplement their income with part-time work. If there are no part-time jobs to be had AND the full-time labor market is contracting, what do you do if you're trying to support your family?
(I know the answer to that question is government handouts. That in and of itself is a terrifying prospect).
I don't think many people are looking at the job market as a public vs. private sector problem. But you raise really good points about how the public sector is essentially subsidizing a workforce that does nothing. That's not to say all people in the public sector are bad people, it's just to acknowledge that economically speaking, the jobs the government creates aren't productive jobs.
No one is contributing to GDP growth by drafting slides at the Pentagon, I can tell you that.
Highly relevant and insightful. There are also between 1.2 and 1.9 million prisoners in the U.S., who aren't counted as unemployed, and in fact are huge financial drag on state and federal government. Ex-cons also have a very high unemployment rate, and I suspect that they aren't accounted for either. There's no doubt in my mind that there will be painful repercussions for the state of U.S. finances, not too far in the future. Thanks.
Great work. I will add a few points to supplement this essay.
1. The Bureau of Labor Statistics would brought under the administration by Obama. It used to be independent. In July they over reported jobs created by 800,000... a record error. They had to walk it back but the corporate media had already pained a rosy picture for the Biden Administration in an election year.
2. The government reports the U-3 measure as the unemployment rate. It is currently about 4%. But the U-6 measure is the REAL unemployment rate because it factors those working in part time jobs, those with more than one job and those that have been discouraged and dropped out of looking for a job. That rate is about double the U-3.
3. There are 330 counties in the US, about 1,200 communities, that are considered labor surplus areas. The real U-6 unemployment rates for those communities is way in the double digits. For certain demographics like youth, male and black... they are much higher... in many cases being 50% or higher.
4. There is another disingenuous report of an increase in small business starts. However, 82% are non-employee small businesses... just people needing a Schedule-C for their 1099 gig economy work because they cannot find a job with an existing company.
You are correct. The private economy is not creating enough jobs to meet the needs of the citizens. The oversupply of labor compared to the undersupply of good enough jobs has put downward wage pressure on the remaining jobs. Meanwhile government has continued to increase the pay and benefits of public sector workers, thus creating a huge disparity in total compensation between public and private sector... and at the same time creating a huge merit disparity between private and public sector as the greater competition for work in the private sector has resulted in much higher capable labor. Government workers are overpaid and underqualified compared to the private sector. It is time for a reset.
Fantastic feedback! Thank you. I had not realized BLS was previously independent. That makes sense why the reporting has been the way it has been recently.
I also appreciate you calling out the U-6 rate. I'm thinking of doing a deep dive into part-time employment because it obviously doesn't get the headlines full time layoffs do.
Based on a couple of part-time jobs I interviewed for locally, I think the part-time labor market has cooled off significantly. This is important because in times of economic stress, workers will look to supplement their income with part-time work. If there are no part-time jobs to be had AND the full-time labor market is contracting, what do you do if you're trying to support your family?
(I know the answer to that question is government handouts. That in and of itself is a terrifying prospect).
I don't think many people are looking at the job market as a public vs. private sector problem. But you raise really good points about how the public sector is essentially subsidizing a workforce that does nothing. That's not to say all people in the public sector are bad people, it's just to acknowledge that economically speaking, the jobs the government creates aren't productive jobs.
No one is contributing to GDP growth by drafting slides at the Pentagon, I can tell you that.
Highly relevant and insightful. There are also between 1.2 and 1.9 million prisoners in the U.S., who aren't counted as unemployed, and in fact are huge financial drag on state and federal government. Ex-cons also have a very high unemployment rate, and I suspect that they aren't accounted for either. There's no doubt in my mind that there will be painful repercussions for the state of U.S. finances, not too far in the future. Thanks.
I had not even considered how prisoners and ex-cons might fit into the data. Thanks for calling that out.