Curiouser and curiouser...
When I started reading this story from the NYT about older men who've left the work force and aren't really looking for a job, I thought "What the hell? Why is this news?" So some old fat guys like the one in the picture aren't working, so what? Maybe it's just the slacker angle?
Then I found it--the nugget:
Despite their great numbers, many of the men not working are missing from the nation’s best-known statistic on unemployment. 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. (my emphasis)
Isn't it funny how lots of figures lately just aren't as good of measures of the country's well-being as they used to be--say back in the Clinton administration?? The stock market, unemployment rate, subjective measures of happiness, etc. Somehow in the last 6 years they've all gone to crap--about the same time that homelessness suddenly reappeared. Odd.
Then I found it--the nugget:
Despite their great numbers, many of the men not working are missing from the nation’s best-known statistic on unemployment. 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. (my emphasis)
Isn't it funny how lots of figures lately just aren't as good of measures of the country's well-being as they used to be--say back in the Clinton administration?? The stock market, unemployment rate, subjective measures of happiness, etc. Somehow in the last 6 years they've all gone to crap--about the same time that homelessness suddenly reappeared. Odd.
posted by rattlerd | 3:27 PM
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