Michael Hobbes: It's so weird to me how this doesn't seem to spark much urgency in the media. Widespread misconceptions mean you're not doing your job! Not everything has to be "news" in the sense of a novel event, we've got to figure out how to remind people of background conditions..

It's so weird to me how this doesn't seem to spark much urgency in the media. Widespread misconceptions mean you're not doing your job! Not everything has to be "news" in the sense of a novel event, we've got to figure out how to remind people of background conditions..

Nate Silver would tell you that the public opinion was correct.

and the doubling down would never cease

I’m sure it’s already in the replies, but “the unemployment rate” is just a statistic of who’s looking for work actively and hasn’t given up or spent so long trying they don’t count any longer. The number of people that want to work, but are so put off of trying? Much higher, methinks

Right but that's not really relevant here. Saying "unemployment is low, but that statistic doesn't capture people's qualitative experience of the economy" is fine but that's not what people are saying. They're saying "unemployment is high," which is straightforwardly false.

Maybe some respondents are interpreting "the unemployment rate" in a sense distinct from the official government statistic "The Unemployment Rate"? People misunderstand survey questions all the time. That means something different (and vaguer and harder to falsify) than saying the statistic is high.

I think it’s really important to make note: “a survey of economic perception,” in the roping-in process, regardless, but especially if those words are uttered, answers are prejudiced away from “answer like it’s a quiz, what you believe factual” toward “but how do you *feels*”

Yes I get nuanced answers like that from the kind of people you chat with at the bus stop or in front of the grocery store allll the tiiime

a number is low. people say that that precise number is high. this is not subject to argument.

I suspect demographics. Lots of older people who don't want/need to work, justifying their reluctance with the "unemployment high" story. Exacerbated since the pandemic, but boomers reaching retirement age is a thing.

Unemployment data is also not just a single number. It's a whole suite of data, pretty much all of which says the same thing.

Those numbers are also tracked! The unemployment rate that's widely published is known as U-3; rates U-4 through U-6 include varying measures of "discouraged workers". www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm

Alternative Measures of Labor Underutilization for States, 2023 Annual Averages : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statisticswww.bls.gov Alternative Measures of Labor Underutilization for States

Cool! That’s great! I’m just 0% surprised whoever answered this survey answered how they did, not based on misinformation—we all know selection bias inbuilt to “folks who have the time of day for a survey, they way surveys are conducted nowdays” …that those folks answered on their gut feels

Looks like the economist—I recognize that typeface—reporting on a “poll.” Intuition suggests a phone poll, something like Gallup, a person robotically rushing and being rushed through a dozen questions. The kind of people who answer “unknown number”to donate 5m to autodial. Hard to be disappointed.

>> Looks like the economist—I recognize that typeface What are you talking about? The link I provided is to the US Bureau of Labor website.

Here's the survey methodology; it does not line up with your intuition. www.bls.gov/opub/hom/cps...

Data Sources : Handbook of Methods: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statisticswww.bls.gov

In the OP there’s an economist article referenced, By screenshot, referring to people’s *perception* of “is the unemployment rate high or low.” You are linking a bureau of labor statistics page—

Of course that's exactly why U-3 is the official number - it's concrete and doesn't rely on feels. But gov't DOES track this stuff, and (to some degree) tries to utilize it; short of grabbing people off the street and interrogating them under pentothal, do you have a constructive suggestion?

BLS and FRED have you covered: www.bls.gov/news.release... unemployment stats are available in a variety of series from U1 to U6. Adding, for example, "discouraged workers," makes the number more accurate but less precise. Headlines generally favor precision over accuracy, but all are available

I'm not saying a particular level is "good" here, because it doesn't reflect the type of job, or the quality of life if you don't have a job (leaving your job might be a sign of health!), but it's also a really high number for labor force participation: fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11...

also maybe if there's such a wide gap between the measurement and the perception, then the measurement isn't measuring what's actually important people

Nah these are pretty standard metrics we've been using for decades to measure how well the economy is doing. People aren't saying 'unemployment is low but I'm struggling,' they're saying 'unemployment is high' even when they're doing very well personally

i do have a half baked theory that uber and doordash (1) aren’t “employment” in the same way as other jobs and shouldn’t be grouped together with them in metrics and (2) for similar reasons, make comparing to historical employment numbers a bit of an apple and oranges comparison

Exactly right. The gig economy is so pervasive that even if it technically means "having a job", it feels like not having one for a lot of people because of the precarity baked into it.

FWIW active area of study, but these researchers at least think those "jobs" are being undercounted www.reuters.com/markets/us/u...

I would be curious to know what the under-employment numbers have been compared to the unemployment numbers.

The federal definition of "unemployed" doesn't necessarily match lived experience. Aside from leaving out those who are underemployed, it excludes people who have given up, need to do unpaid work (caring for disabled family), can't find affordable child care, are in job training programs, etc.

Sure but it has always had those same caveats, so Michael’s point stands.

Those caveats that don't make it in the charts are what has been on the rise. There used to be no such thing as a gig economy and I knew all the local homeless by name.

Yes--although the survey questions have been revised repeatedly (most recently in 1994) so claiming a 50+ year record is a bit of a stretch. My point is that a perception employment levels are "bad" may reflect the increasing precarity of minimum wage jobs and lack of ability to work for many.

Exactly. The common use of the term "unemployed" is for people who don't work, more so than people who don't HAVE work. But the federal definition in all these studies specifically includes those people who, for whatever reason, aren't seeking work at all. It's a bad system.

AND, for that reason, we shouldn't necessarily take this piece of info about the economy at face value. The "unemployment rate" might be abnormally low specifically BECAUSE the economy is doing so poorly that more people than normal have given up on working entirely—they cannot support themselves.

I've hijacked this end of the thread for myself now, but I do feel the need to clarify that I'm making these statements in a vacuum; it's entirely possible that, in those other respects, the economy is still fine on paper. I only want pundits to exercise caution when looking at economic indicators.

That is true but the BLS also has alternative measures such as U6 that count those that have given up, and those measures are also showing near-historical lows

Labor force participation has been dropping for 20 years. www.bls.gov/charts/emplo...

Yes, largely because the baby boom generation has aged and retired. Would be concerning if labor force participation stayed constant or rose despite that demographic trend, because that would suggest that even seniors feel compelled to work (eg because of the lack of a social safety net)

The prime-age epop is *also* the highest it’s been since the Clinton administration, so this explanation seems unlikely.

Bingo, this objection just doesn't work with the data. Labor force participation is high and unemployment is low.

No, labor force participation isn't high; it has dropped steadily over the past 20 years. The big drop from Covid has been recovered, but overall the rate is still lower than in the past. www.bls.gov/charts/emplo...

Civilian labor force participation ratewww.bls.gov

It is always difficult to contextualize the responses when you survey someone on what they think is happening to someone else

These are standard metrics, yes. Useful until things reach a sea change—which is exactly what we’ve come to as a critical mass of folks have removed themselves from that number and don’t count anymore as “unemployed”—and are now regarded as non-workers

I think the issue is that the ? “how do you feel about the economy” is understood by most people as “how do you feel about the future,” which is pretty understandable given how we think and talk about the economy in the US

People think crime is at an all-time high, and it's not because they're personally getting robbed. It's because they're constantly seeing stories about it on social media. Likewise, most Americans say they, personally, are doing well! They just wrongly think that most other people aren't.

I’d say “can people who are looking for work find work” is important and “do I like Joe Biden” is not actually important in terms of material conditions, but the perception depends on the latter more than the former.

All of these post hoc explanations completely bake in the assumption that people form their opinions about "how things are going" rationally.

Always annoys me when news orgs report on 'opinion' for things which are verifiable fact. Spend more time reporting that the employment rate is X and less time on "people feel the employment rate is Y"

Yeah but the workforce participation rate remains fairly low. There’s basically a permanent underclass built into the unemployment statistics.

Or maybe the perception is coming from unreliable sources.

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