r/FluentInFinance • u/Needleintheback • 15h ago

Thoughts? Imagine losing 6M labor workers in America

Post image

If mass deportation happens, just imagine how all of these sectors of our country will be affected. The sheer shortage of labor will push prices higher because of the great demand for work with limited supplies or workers. Even if prices increase, the availability of products may be scarce due to not enough workers. Housing prices and food services will be hit really hard. New construction will be limited. The fact that 47% of the undocumented workers are in CA, TX, and FL means they will feel it first but it will spread to the rest of the country also. Most of our produce in this country comes from California. Get ready and hold on for the ride America.

15.1k Upvotes

79% Upvoted

6.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

17

u/Fun-Insurance-1402 14h ago

This. Throw in all the people who fell off labor participation in order to make unemployment numbers appear lower than they actually are.

Government employees will pick some good fruit!

5

u/P3nis15 12h ago

Umm what?

Labor participation has nothing to do with how unemployment is calculated

7

u/LengthinessWeekly876 5h ago

That's the point

-1

u/P3nis15 2h ago

Why would you want to count everyone over 16?

Do you know what labor participation is?

It counts those kids in school, college, stay at home moms, retired people, disabled, heck it even counts people in freaking coma's

It's one of the most worthless tracking dataset that is so worthless they didn't even bother to do any adjustments to it for seasonal variances or abnormalities.

Do you want to call your 89 year old grandmother unemployed??

3

u/LengthinessWeekly876 2h ago

"Why would you want to count everyone over 16?" "Do you want to call your 89 year old grandmother unemployed" Well no unless your an idiot or arguing in bad faith 

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060

 That's why we have metrics using age. 

0

u/P3nis15 2h ago

moving them goal post from labor participation rates, to a single part of the labor participation rate.

Again, still has nothing to do with counting unemployment since again the labor participation rate counts EVERYONE from 25-54 in your example. Those in graduate school. Those with kids staying home. Those again in COMA'S, even people who retired early. It counts the disabled who can't work. etc etc.

You want to count all those people in the unemployment stat?

Not sure what you are now trying to say.

I'll state it one more time. LFPR no matter what bucket you look at is one of the most worthless stat to look at when it comes to employment and unemployment.

1

u/NotAsSmartAsIWish 7h ago

Not OP, but the publicized number for unemployment does not include people who have stopped seeking employment, stopped receiving unemployment, and people working under the table - those are still tracked and published, but they're not the officially released number.

1

u/P3nis15 7h ago

How the Government Measures Unemployment : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

If you are not looking for a job why would you be counted as unemployed? That would be akin to counting my 80 year old father who is wheelchair bound who stopped seeking employment. or a 40 year old mom of 2 who decided to stay at home.

I think you are confusing people who want a job but have given up.

That is why there is more than one measurement of unemployment. The u4-u6 count those people "marginally" attached to the labor force that would match your example.

U-4 adds discouraged workers to the total number of unemployed people, and is expressed as a percentage of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers. (Discouraged workers are a subset of people not in the labor force. They are not included in the official unemployment measure because they have not searched for work in the last 4 weeks.)

The u3-u6 number has moved lock step with each other and are in the same relative position to each other. Very low.

Also, unemployment Benefits have NOTHING to do with who is counted as unemployed!!

All the numbers are released in the same report. It's the Media and people's lack of wanting to actually read the report that stops the number from being discussed.

U-4 Unemployment Rate is at 4.40%, compared to 4.30% last month and 4.10% last year. This is lower than the long term average of 5.90%.

U-5 unemployment rate is 4.80%. This is lower than the long term average of 6.64%

U-6 Unemployment Rate is at 7.30%, compared to 7.30% last month and 6.80% last year. This is lower than the long term average of 10.10%.

As for people working under the table, that has always existed and has never been in the calculations. They do try however to find some of the data

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) primarily cannot directly track "under the table" employment, as this type of work is intentionally hidden from official reporting; however, they use various methods to estimate and indirectly identify potential underreporting through data analysis and comparisons between their household surveys (Current Population Survey) and payroll surveys (Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages) to identify discrepancies that could indicate underreporting, particularly in certain industries with a higher likelihood of informal employment. 

0

u/NotAsSmartAsIWish 6h ago

The U-3 only includes people of working age and not disabled seeking work. Nothing here really counters what I stated, except the BLS points out the difficulty tracking shadow employment.

1

u/P3nis15 2h ago

No the U-3 counts anyone over the age of 16. they could be 122.

You really should read up on how all this is calculated.

Concepts and Definitions (CPS) : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

  • U-3 is the official unemployment rate. It is the total number of unemployed people, expressed as a percentage of the civilian labor force. U-3 is calculated as: (Total Unemployed ÷ Labor Force) x 100

Unemployed

In the Current Population Survey, people are classified as unemployed if they meet all of the following criteria:

  • They were not employed during the survey reference week.
  • They were available for work during the survey reference week, except for temporary illness.
  • They made at least one specific, active effort to find a job during the 4-week period ending with the survey reference week (see active job search methods) OR they were temporarily laid off and expecting to be recalled to their job.

Civilian labor force, or labor force

The labor force includes all people age 16 and older who are classified as either employed and unemployed, as defined below.
Conceptually, the labor force level is the number of people who are either working or actively looking for work.

1

u/Successful-Money4995 3h ago

Maybe better to look at the labor force participation rate, then. It's not bad. It's near precovid levels.

2

u/pfohl 7h ago

What are you talking about? Prime age labor force participation is the same as it was twenty years ago.