Unemployment Rate
Just an FYI to those folks who believe that the unemployment rate is flat and shows that the economy is doing well, there was this article in the NY Times today - about men who have been unemployed for years and are not looking any longer (therefore not counted in the rate). So, I still think we're in trouble - it's just not staring at us in the face.
Oh, most of these gentlemen have women who are providing for them. I always said I needed a wife.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/31/business/31men.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087%0A&en=33b9dd1da47b2216&ex=1154491200
Oh, most of these gentlemen have women who are providing for them. I always said I needed a wife.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/31/business/31men.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087%0A&en=33b9dd1da47b2216&ex=1154491200
posted by Mitzi at Monday, July 31, 2006
2 Comments:
If the New York Times says it….it must be so………”phone call for Jason Blair….Mr. Blair……” and of course they have no political agenda. Amazing…. I read the same article and came to a different conclusion.
Some of the quotes:
“I have come to realize that my free time is worth a lot to me,” he said.
“They are turning down jobs they think beneath them or are unable to find work for which they are qualified, even as an expanding economy offers opportunities to work.”
“Many of these men could find work if they had to, but with lower pay and fewer benefits than they once earned, and they have decided they prefer the alternative.”
It’s obviously not a necessity for these guys to work….or they probably would. Looks like many of them are tapping into a boom in their real estate values……using the equity to spending time “with diversions: playing the piano, reading histories and biographies, writing unpublished Western potboilers in the Louis L’Amour style — all activities once relegated to spare time.” Often staying “up late and” sleeping “until 11 a.m.”
I’m assuming you keyed on the following: “The jobless rate is now a low 4.6 percent, yet that number excludes most of the missing men, because they have stopped looking for work and are therefore not considered officially unemployed. That makes the unemployment rate a far less useful measure of the country’s well-being than it once was.”
I would suggest that there always has been the hard-core unemployed that either can’t or won’t work, so that “useful measure of the country’s well-being” is no more relevant….or irrelevant than it used to be…it just is. It just seems like these guys have taken it to another level. The U.S. isn’t perfect, but just the percentage of growth in our GDP the last year is bigger than the entire economy of China. Things could be a lot worse.
I do need a wife to support me while read all day and write all night.
Post a Comment
<< Home