Kickaha wrote:
I don't know if you have any education background in economics. What I do remember from college economics classes was there are several different ways the government counts the number of unemployed. These different ways of counting leads to different percentages of unemployment. The most accurate way of counting the employment level is expressing it as a percentage of economic participation. In other words, not the raw number of people with jobs, but the percentage of the population with jobs. This enables you to judge the economies over time. It doesn't matter if the population is 50 million or 1 billion, by seeing the percentages you could say one eras economy was stonger or weaker than another. For example, the population is 1 billion and 600 million are employed, or a participation rate of 60%. As compared to an era with a population of 100 million and 75 million are employed. While the population of 1 billion has many more people employed, the economy is weaker because it has a lower percentage of economic participation (60% versus 75%). This is an over simplification, but it conveys the general idea.
I don't know if you have any education background ... (
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So, Kickaha... What is it that you think I'm missing? I mean, the unemployment rate has always expressed as a percentage, that's why it's called a unemployment *rate*. So I'm not sure why, twice now, you felt a need to tell me that it's not a raw number.
Also, I don't know how long ago you went to college but you don't have to think that far back to figure out how the unemployment rate is calculated. In fact, I specified exactly how it's calculated in my first response to you... When I said...
It may help if you understood how the unemployment rate is actually calculated. The basic calculation is to divide the number of persons unemployed by the number of persons in the labor force then dividing the answer by 100.https://www.onepoliticalplaza.com/tpr?p=3492917&t=198884How did I get that answer? I looked it up on the website for the U.S. Department of Labor which is responsible for publishing the rate on a quarterly basis. What better source than the agency publishing the numbers, right? But if you prefer there are other sources such as Investopedia that also explain the calculation.
Now, regarding your assertion that the current unemployment rate signifies a stronger economy under Trump I'm just going to repeat the same two counter-arguments that I have already presented...
1. The unemployment rate has been declining at a consistent rate since 2012, so there is literally no evidence that anything in the economy affecting the unemployment rate has changed since then.
Put it this way, the Porsche 918 Spyder can accelerate from 0 mph to 60 mph in 2.5 seconds. Just because at 1 second the car hasn't reached 60 mph yet doesn't mean it sucks and when it does reach 60 mph it's not because it was reengineered in the last 1.5 seconds.
The same applies to the unemployment rate. Here's the trend from 2012 to now.
...just because, it was only at 5% in 2016 doesn't mean the economy sucked and when it did reach below 4% in 2020 it's not because the economy was reengineered in 4 years. The trend is consistent, which indicates the cause of the decline is more likely to be found where you see an actual change in the pattern, like what you see in 2020 when the pandemic hit. Prior to that, the change that started the downward trend was during the Obama Administration not the Trump Administration. In fact if anything, looking at the chart, you can see that the rate of decline actually slowed down a little bit in the Trump years.
2. All that being said... the unemployment number is still an inaccurate read on joblessness! Yes, the unemployment rate is a percentage. And yes, that percentage is defined (using your words) as "the percentage of the population with jobs".
But maybe you didn't understand me when I said THAT percentage of population is only based on those claiming unemployment benefits. For a lot of folks, unemployment benefits ran out before they could find a job and now they're still looking for work but they are no longer counted in the calculation.
Put it this way... Trump could theoretically bring the unemployment rate (as it is presently calculated) all the way to 0% just by cutting unemployment insurance. (I say "theoretically" because unemployment benefits are managed by the states not the president.)