EJ Antoni/Heritage writes alarmingly about how excluding marginally attached workers from the calculation of unemployment is misleading:
Once you factor in the millions of people missing from the labor market (don’t have jobs but are excluded from official unemployment calculation), the unemployment rate jumps from 4.2% to somewhere btwn 7.0% and 8.5%, depending on methodology:
Indeed U6 — which incorporates marginally attached workers into the calculation of unemployment — is higher than U3.
Figure 1: Official unemployment rate (U3) (blue), and total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force (U6) (tan). NBER defined peak-to-trough recession dates shaded gray. Source: BLS, NBER.
U6 is indeed higher than U3 by 3.7 ppts. Over the sample shown above, the gap is on average…4.5 ppts.
And this was the least from Antoni’s disinformation campaign. Funny – we never heard about U6 during Trump’s term in office.
https://jabberwocking.com/half-of-all-americans-are-out-of-work/
Half of all Americans are out of work
Antoni is an amateur. Kevin Drum shows us how this is done:
‘In August the United States had 161 million workers out of a total population of 337 million. That’s an unemployment rate of 52.1%.
Hey JD Vance wants old people and young children to work for a living.
Let those little newborns suck on mommy – next thing you know they will be sucking on the government. Get them a job – the sooner the better.
Let’s look at U6 for the 38 months Trump was President before he let the COVID disaster start. Hmmm – FRED tells me that this unemployment rate averaged 7.8%. Under Trump – this is the best economy ever. Under Biden we are talking about the Great Depression. Funny how Antoni looks at data.
Employment to population ratio 24 to 54.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060
Almost back to trend pre covid!
Important link but you can’t read. Try 25-54. And 80.9% is not almost back to 80.6%. It is GREATER than 80.6%.
This is one of those “look what I discovered!” hack jobs. Everybody who knows anything about labor market stats knows about U6. Antoni’s audience is people who don’t know much, but want to be outraged. Feeling like they are getting smart stuff is probably also a plus. After all those years in high school, feeling like you understand smart stuff is soooo nice!
Antoni is just a Kudlow mini-me.
It is interesting, though, that the U3\U6 gap is narrow right now. A strong labor market, which we’ve had for some time, is good for the marginally attached crowd. That was the idea behind the Greenspan-era growth experiment, and is clear from today’s economy, too.
Kind of touching and emotionally moving that Republicans suddenly care about the disenfranchised, those on the margins, and fringe society. I’m getting misty eyed, you have some Kleenex you can send me from the Rocky Top??
Us high-T men don’t use Kleenex. That’s what sleeves are for. I learned that from JD.
: )
“Antoni is just a Kudlow mini-me.”
I’ve been trashing Kudlow’s mendacity for over 20 years. Antoni is worse than Kudlow ever could be. AND he has his pretend PhD!
Here’s the picture:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1twoF
When U3 unemployment is low, the gap between U3 and U6 is also low. Antoni seems to have missed that point. Good thing he has a PhD to fall back on.
If Antoni wanted an apples to apples comparison, he could have told us that while Trump inherited U6 = 9.2% and saw it fell to 6.9% three years later (that’s before he below it up in 2020) while Biden inherited U6 = 11.2% and saw it fall to 7.2% three years later.
Oh wait – that would be too honest for the MAGA crowd. Never mind.
Menzie
I urge Wisconsinites to watch Joe Biden’s speech in Westby WI in which he talked comprehensively about a $7.3 billion in investments for 16 cooperatives that will provide electricity for millions of families in rural areas across 23 states and investments in rural broadband that provided 72,000 additional Wisconsin homes and small businesses with high-speed internet and badly needed investments in rural water system infrastructure. (BTW – he also addressed the most recent school shooting and talked about the need for a blasted machine gun ban (my words)) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-biden-delivers-remarks-on-economy-during-visit-to-wisconsin
Please compare to the deranged Trump speech in Mosinee WI the next day in which he promised to not start WWIII and rambled on about Hannibal Lecter and Al Capone, and wants to eliminate the Dept of Education so that as Trump says, “We’ll send it back to the states so that Ron Johnson can run it,” referring to Wisconsin’s Republican U.S. senator. (Just FYI in Wisconsin – the state Dept of Education already manages education in the state via local school boards) Trump also repeated his delusional and deranged story about how parents send “Jimmy” to school and he comes home with a different gender. (Just FYI – this does not happen.) https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/09/07/takeaways-from-donald-trumps-rally-in-mosinee-wisconsin/75057336007/
Trump is dangerously mentally unfit for public office.
Old people can jumble their words, have “their moments” in evening time. It doesn’t mean they aren’t very cognitive (even inside those very same moments when they might not be able to find that 1-2 words, or for 5 seconds lose continuity of thought. I remain convinced President Biden would have had a better than average 2nd term. But it’s not the era of print newspapers and Abe Lincoln. It’s not even the era of fireside chats on the radio when families would sit and earnestly listen with affection for their leader. It’s the era of PlayStation 5, “AI” and “What are you do for MY interest group??” “What are you doing for ME??” We have to accept it for what it is, and move on.
biden is old. no denying that. old people think, talk and act slowly. i don’t think he has any deficiency that would inhibit him from holding office. if we were in the age of print newspaper, he would be fine (reagan survived and was much worse). however, we are in the world of internet and immediate publication of video feeds. it is impossible for biden to be old and look good in that format. at least he realized that truth.
on the other hand, trump will continue to look old, slow and disheveled throughout the campaign, because that is what he is and that is what will be shown. nobody wants an old feeble man leading the country. that is why real republicans are distancing themselves from him daily. every press conference is an opportunity for trump to demonstrate an incoherent personality. and rick stryker his a sucker who has fallen for that cult of personality, hook, line and sinker.
I found something I thought was near genius. The cartoon is actually a remix of something someone had said on a different YT channel, and kind of “remixed”. This really is the basis of how you get guys like Bruce Hall, Peaktrader, Ed Hanson, sammie, CoRev and the like. Look for a YT channel called “Dark Brandon” and look for the September 4th post. The thumbnail of the video looks like a cartoon and says “Dumb AF”. I promise it’s worth the search. It’s a 6 minute video. The title of the video is “A Very Strong Case Why MAGA Voters Are Stupid”.
I bet Johnny “Grumpy” Cuckrant would have no idea they are talking about him, even if he listened directly.
That was really good. One quibble. Bannon gives Lee Atwater credit for the Southern Strategy. Actually, Atwater only fostered what Kevin Phillips started:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/emerging-republican-majority/595504/
How the Republican Majority Emerged
Fifty years after the Republican Party hit upon a winning formula, President Trump is putting it at risk.
Interesting stuff, thanks for edifying me on Phillips.
U6, although rising, remains near 30 year lows.
Gee – you are at least more honest than Antoni. Low bar however.