this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2025
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Original URL where the cowards have changed the title now: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/11/democrats-tricked-strong-economy-00203464

I don’t believe those who went into this past election taking pride in the unemployment numbers understood that the near-record low unemployment figures — the figure was a mere 4.2 percent in November — counted homeless people doing occasional work as “employed.” But the implications are powerful. If you filter the statistic to include as unemployed people who can’t find anything but part-time work or who make a poverty wage (roughly $25,000), the percentage is actually 23.7 percent. In other words, nearly one of every four workers is functionally unemployed in America today — hardly something to celebrate.

Any fucking questions

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Many in Washington bristled at the public’s failure to register how strong the economy really was

"The economy is so good guys."

"Why can't I afford to eat?"

"Shut up I said the economy is good, OK?!"

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The actual unemployment rate being nearly 24% makes me actually nauseous

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Do you have some reading about where or how you came to that conclusion? I'm not overly doubting you, I'm excited to read.

Edit: Wow, I'm kind of an idiot. I don't remember seeing that in the description.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

]:;

It's the article I'm replying too here. (Also the top comment has a link to a site the writer has made which tracks it over time)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Crap, I'm an idiot. I speed-read part of the description and just now properly read it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

It happens. Steve Bannon's flood the zone is a deliberate tactic.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Unemployment is sucha bullshit thing to measure tbh. I work in the unemployment sector and 95% of people I see are on and off the job again, working shit jobs for low wages for two weeks, getting benefits for the other two weeks of the months. They live in poverty.

They are not included in the long time unemployment category though. But there is nothing great about their situation.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Hey, you described me, but it's more like a hustle here a hustle there.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

Yeah, figuring out the actual unemployment in capitalism is a fucking joke.

I think measuring the unemployment in a socialist country is typically way more accurate, and China's unemployment rate is relatively low at roughly 4-5 percent.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Someone better check on Will Stancil.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Liberals when asked to side with imperialism, colonization, exploitation: 👍

Liberals when asked to do virtually anything else:

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I wish I'd gotten my shit together a lot sooner, but it's spilled milk now. Onward!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I get that and kudos for having a forward-moving mindset about it. Sometimes I'm not as patient as I should be with others, especially knowing how briefly I've known better compared to how long I've been a grown adult and could have if I'd been exposed to the right information and worked it out. But we all come from different places and it's not a contest, after all. Once we know better, we can start to do better, and that's exponentially more helpful than being in the way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

The main thing is solidarity. We tease out the largest knots first and tease out the smaller ones once that work is done.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

The government creates the U4 thu U6 categories and these fucking dorks don't ever look at any number that shows them something they don't want to see

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Didn't homelessness go up by 18% or something similar? On top of that, people having to work a part-time job on top of a full-time job tends to pad the labor statistics for sure.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You see if someone is working two jobs that negates one person not having a job, think about it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

That's why everyone should work four jobs to cover the slacker infants being born all the time!

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I remember reading about the "true unemployment rate" a while back, I always go there to check the rate instead of that 4% number. So ridiculous.

True unemployment rate

EDIT: Looks like it's from the author of that article! Anyways yeah it's a running counter

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Going by the graph at that link, the "true unemployment" has been as low as it's ever been for the past few years. I guess I don't understand the point of the article in the OP.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

I don't think the decades-long trend is as important as:

  1. The real rate not meaningfully changing from 2020-2024,
  2. The rate still being high in absolute terms (1 in 4), and
  3. Democrats running as if the economy was not only doing well, but had improved significantly under Biden.

I haven't flipped through the site a bunch, but I wonder if the higher historical rates are offset to a degree by lower costs of living in, say, 1995.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

24% vs 4% is by estimations about a 40m person difference. That seems like an incredibly important point to get across

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yes, of course. I just don't understand the framing of Democrats being tricked. Is it supposed to be apologia for the Democrats running campaigns that got Trump elected twice?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Democrat voters were uniformly tricked. Democrat politicians, who worked hard to elect Trump twice, were instrumental in doing the tricking. The point of the article is to explain the method by which the latter successfully tricked the former for decades.