Despite having 3.80% of unemployment, why is there poverty in the United States?
Housing/Shelter/Standard of Livingemployment does not = a living wage.
its really that simple. unemployment is just "do people have jobs". it says nothing about how much money they are getting paid.
ELI5: everyone in NYC is a janitor making 30k, NYC has 0% unemployment, but 100% poverty.
I don't know if this is accurate and have never taken the time to verify, but I was told something along the lines of the unemployment numbers only count people actively looking for a job as well.
There are six different ways the BLS measures unemployment. The most commonly used figure is U-3, which does exclude those people. Some people prefer to use the broadest measure, U-6, which includes them (and underemployed people, too).
Info here: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
Right now, U-6 sits at 7.4%, which is less than a percent away from it's all-time record low over the past 30 years.
I think it is important we acknowledge that the U-3 is pie in the sky stuff politicians use because it is essentially best-case figures. We can also be happy that U-6 unemployment is not catastrophically bad, because you're right that we're way under the historical average.
That is accurate. Last I heard if you are out of the working market for 6 months as a working age individual, you fall off the unemployment statistics because it is now essentially a lifestyle. The assumption is that if you are seriously looking, you would have found employment within 6 months.
Except it’s not 6 months it’s 4 weeks!
Government likes that number LOW.
Statistics, damned statistics, and LIES
That's an incredibly short period of time. Especially if you lose a job in a specialized industry for some reason and are trying to find a replacement.
Well it’s whether you’ve made specific efforts to find a job (which is a requirement for most UI benefits) not that you’re only counted for 4 weeks after you become unemployed.
Yes, that is exactly what Optimus Prime meant when he said “Actively looking for work”
That’s not how it works. If you look for work at ANY time within the last 4 weeks, you are still considered among the unemployed rather than the pool of people not looking for work. You can be considered unemployed for years as long as you keep the 4-week clock going.
but what about the statistics and lies? I want to feel that the government is covering up information.
Flagrantly untrue. In fact there is no overall threshold, it's if you've "looked for work" in 4 weeks. If you've gone a month without googling "jobs near me", it is accurate to say you aren't looking for work.
Here's a thought, if you need to lie to make a point, don't make that point.
That begs the question, what is the unemployment rate as defined by a layman? Simple percentage of not-working right now.
There’s different ways to track unemployment, the most commonly used are the U-3 and U-6 I believe
This is true, but the proportion of people who either have jobs or are looking is also a number economists track (labor force participation rate). For some reason this one doesn't get as much media attention even though it's released in the same reports as the unemployment numbers
Actively looking for a job and can be accounted for, the most reliable way is those who report this or file for unemployment. This doesn't take into consideration people who simply leave the work force and have been jobless for a long time.
There's a lot it doesn't include. People NOT looking for work, aren't considered unemployed
Well, they aren’t are they?
He I’m a janitor in nyc and I make 50k!
Numbers have always been aloof too, practically you can take most data and twist it. So part-time is “employee” who might just be working 10 hours a week. Unemployment numbers don’t separate poverty, or quality of life. It just measures how many are working versus not.
Exactly - you get paid to stay under the poverty line. A lot of circumstances, people don’t have a say over their schedule either, and must supplement multiple jobs to even continue to work full time hours. Having a job just means having a boss.
$1,500 rent, $2,200 month take home pay
Mandatory car in 90% of the country. Car payment, insurance, registration, gas and repairs will run you 750 bucks a month minimum. No car no access to work, food or medical care.
Oh I could go down a rabbit hole of the rest of expenses.
To still have money to put towards general savings, emergency savings, 529/Roth plans and paying market rate for housing and transportation one needs a monthly take home around $5,000.
Cars are soon going to be a privilege even though it’s a necessity in most of the country.
I think I saw some staggering statistic on the news that said in order to live comfortably in the United States you would need to earn more than 100k.
Yeah that’s about right for those paying todays market rate, now those who got housing years ago and have sub $1,000 mortgages can obviously survive on less but that percentage of folks is only going to decrease as time goes on.
Most people make between $40,000-$60,000
There aren’t that many six figure jobs to go around and we have a staggering amount of people who make $25,000-$40,000 working full time…the numbers don’t go hand in hand with what it actually takes to survive today.
The idea that comfort requires 30% discretionary spending feels like this study was paid for by the credit card companies.
Yes and in CA, HI, and MA it was over 200K. Scary.
household income, I’d absolutely agree.
To still have money to put towards general savings, emergency savings, 529/Roth plans and paying market rate for housing and transportation one needs a monthly take home around $5,000.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you based this off HCOL areas, but I think you're actually just kinda off base. I make roughly 3500 take home in a MCOL area (my rent is about 1400 monthly). I save 10% of every paycheck, make a car payment on a 2023 vehicle, pay insurance and all my bills. I still have a sizable chunk of money left over every paycheck for recreation.
Your 5000 dollar figure reads as either: very HCOL area, kids/dependents, or bad financial management
5000 dollars gross is only 4,120 take home. so you are only really talking about 600ish difference which is certainly within a margin of error even as a difference between low cost and mid-cost areas. wouldnt even really cover the price increase to a hcol place so 5000 probably isnt too far off, especially considering 10% savings really isnt "comfortable"
if you want to retire more than ten years before you die... youll need 100 years of savings. the math aint mathin'
Yes, this person is trying to convince themselves they are in a good position but they know their income is way too low to ever retire or handle an expensive emergency bigger than a $50 surprise bill.
1400 rent is incredibly cheap
Mandatory car yes. Car payments aren’t mandatory. Neither is $750 a month for insurance. I pay $225 for 2 cars with full coverage and renters insurance. Both cars are over 10 years old and don’t have payments, so I could have state minimum if I wanted.
People way over spend on their vehicles and will justify it in a lot of ways.
My paid off car costs $400 for full coverage and 200 for liability. My financed car (paid off one died on me completely and needs a new engine, need car for work) only added 5 to the insurance bill (doesn’t require full coverage insurance)
Preach!
this is stupid. Why would I pay that in rent when I take home less than $13/hr? Why would I not find two rommates and split a 3 bedroom for 2000/mo?
If you’ve ever had roommates you’d know. 99% of people are terrible roommates. I’ve been saddled with paying their way while cleaning up after them too many times to ever try having a roommate EVER again.
I will and am living in my car right now as opposed to doing that again.
You never know peoples circumstances, could be someone leaving a domestic violence situation, the point is someone should be able to survive working full time with at least a 1 bedroom apartment.
And $2,200 month take home is closer to $20 an hour with the whole health, dental, 401K, taxes, etc…
Especially if you have a family health plan.
someone leaving a domestic violence situation would be plausible if it was a temporary emergency while you look for a permanent place with some roommates. But then this would sort of be irrelevant. I dont understand what makes someone entitled to living with no other people just because you put in 40 hrs a week doing something. Its never been that way and seems like an arbitrary line. Like I said in a different comment, I make 86k a year in a low COL town and I STILL have a roommate because its just a good idea while I save for a house and I dont really mind having her there. We even have our own bathrooms.
"Its never been that way" it literally used to be that a single full time salary was expected to able to support a married family with a kid or at a minimum a married couple.
Yep this is what I did until I found my big boy job. We rented a 4 bedroom home between 4 of us. Don’t have 3 friends to split with? Find a room to rent somewhere.
I’ve only had bad experiences with trying the roommate thing. That’s why people don’t do it.
Because they only use excuses
You have it completely backwards. This is the inevitable result of an artificially constrained housing supply at the local level. When NIMBY types (of which there are plenty in progressive circles) refuse to allow building enough housing to accommodate household formation, increases in prices are to be expected by all but the completely financially illiterate.
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Cut income taxes and those numbers go wayyyy up.
You can be employed and still live in poverty.
Lots of jobs out there, sure. Problem is most of them don't pay enough to survive on.
That number is a little misleading. It doesn’t mean that 96% of the population is employed. It is calculated based on people actively applying to jobs. There are plenty of people in the US who dont have a job and have given up looking. They would not be included in this stat.
Yes, the other statistic to look at is called "Labor Force Participation Rate", which is the number of working age (18-65) year olds who are employed. This number can go up and down for reasons unrelated to economic conditions (e.g. if more people attend college), but it is better at capturing "discouraged workers" or people who would be working but cannot find a job. It is lower now than in was in (the beginning of) 2020, which means that fewer working age people are actually working, despite the low unemployment rate: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART Covid seems to have permanently removed some people from the workforce.
Another crazy thing to notice is that rapid drop during the brief Covid recession is not mirrored by other recessions. During recessions a lot of people get fired, but it generally doesn't impact labor force participation that much, but Covid did.
If you haven't found a job within one month of losing your last one, you're no longer considered "unemployed" in these statistics, as they assume that you have simply exited the labor force and are no longer looking for work. People with a part time job that has cut them down to 10 hours a week or less are still considered "employed" in the BLS statistics even though in reality, they're probably drowning.
It's kind of a BS metric, and there are other ways of crunching the numbers that give a more meaningful picture.
That isn’t quite correct. If you haven’t looked for a job in the last month you are not considered unemployed.
The critera are:
- 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.
Submitting a single application counts as actively job searching.
How do they get this information after your unemployment has run out?
They don’t base the statistic on unemployment insurance. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics does an independent survey monthly.
If you haven't found a job within one month of losing your last one, you're no longer considered "unemployed" in these statistics,
Where do people get these ideas? As long as you are actively looking, you are unemployed
Broader measures, like the employment to population ratio, suggest more people are working than any time since the late 90s. The prime age epop ratio looks at the share of 25-54 who are working, misses all the labor force dropout and retirement issues. It suggests the labor market is still very strong.
Wages aren’t high enough.
Low wages combined with high cost of living, unaffordable healthcare and unaffordable housing
I could be earning 7.25 which is the federal minimum wage. Working 40 hours a week. I would not be unemployed therefore not part of that 3.8%. but I would only be getting $1,100 ish a month. If the only thing you're looking at is number of people employed sure 3.8% is amazing. But if you actually dig into the numbers that is basically people that are claiming unemployment.
snickers is almost 4 bucks
A bag of Lays is $4.79. I remember when that shit was $2.50 not long ago.
I swear I’ve seen them from $5-$7 in my area recently. I refuse to pay that much and haven’t purchased a bag in like 2 years.
I miss snacks bro. But I can’t justify spending $5+ on a bag of chips or a candy bar etc.
Just because you have a job does not mean you are out of poverty.
I have a part time job because it's the only thing I can get right now. I barely get scheduled for 15 hours a week most weeks, earn maybe $300/month. Been applying for other jobs for 9 months and JUST got an interview today. By definition, I am underemployed, so I'm not counted in the unemployment rate. Very lucky to live with family right now, but I would likely be homeless otherwise.
My state's minimum wage is still only $7.25. I made $13 at my job. My mom makes $12. My dad was offered a welding job that paid $16 (despite 30 years of experience) my daughter made $17 before becoming an RN.
Rent for a 1 bedroom here is $1,500. Low wages, politicians who fight to keep the wages low, little to no saftey nets, high costs for basic necessities. These all equal out to poverty.
Because shit is so god dam expensive. I’m getting an oil change today and it’s probably going to cost me 130 bucks.
Working full time doesn’t guarantee a living wage.
Because they pay us slave wages and expect us to afford the essentials which have gone up 1000000% by now fuck. Revolution. Take back the price.
Our wages are trash. It’s embarrassing that people made more in Pandemic unemployment than working a full time job.
Cost of living increasing and pay not. We are losing our home of 7 years. What we are looking at in rent prices now for comparable places is more than double what we pay, and we don’t meet the requirements of 3x the rent nearly every place needs. Gas, food, electric all up. Our phone bill is going up by $30 because they got rid of the affordable connection program. The list goes on!
I think that employers should be penalized if the majority of their employees are on assistance. If your job was truly for students and teenagers why are half of them needing medicade, or section 8, or food stamps. Penalize employers so harshly that they are forced to pay a living wage.
I make 12 dollars an hour and my job refuses to work me full time
Because the minimum wage is shithouse.
Oh and tipping culture, that belongs in the trash.
Oh and underemployment is the real metric, you can be employed yet barely be scraping by as you work 1 day a week.
When we started splitting one full time job into three part time jobs with no benefits and started calling it job creation we started a downhill slide.
COL has risen over 30% while wages have remained stagnant. The federal minimum wage is still $7.25, which is ~$15k before taxes. The federal poverty line is $13,590. That means you can have a full-time job and if you pay taxes and health insurance, you will still live in poverty.
Well there was a guy who owned or was the general manager of a hotel basically bragging that due to the tech layoffs they don’t have negotiate pay for the hotel wages and have been able to hire several people because of that, so basically bragging that due to the layoffs they can undercut people with degrees and education just because the market sucks right now.
The unemployment count is deceiving. It only counts people whose unemployment insurance disbursements haven't run out and doesn't count the underemployed.
Also, the cost of living is increasingly moving capital from the lower classes to the upper.
Busted unions which means low wages and scant benefits for lots of jobs. Half the U.S. workforce makes $20/hr or less, which is $42k/yr or less.
Half. 1 out of every 2 workers in the United States brings home less than $42k per year.
The U.S. at this point is the land of opportunity to be exploited.
Employment pays poverty wages in USA.
Because unemployment doesn't take into account or measure underemployment.
Because the wages are stagnant. Everyone has a job. Maybe even two. Still not enough to live on.
Don't worry though, our billionaires and politicians are doing well.
Unemployment rate is also calculated from the number of people looking for jobs. One can be unemployed due to health issues and not looking for jobs. Their stats would not be in the unemployment rate.
Minimum wage of 7;25 $.
Because no one is making this and most people aren't a single person because most people have children.
I can tell you for sure that at least in my state, I make well below that number, am single, and live extremely comfortably.
I'd be curious. Do your own your own home? Car? I'd actually be very curious about a lot. Your saving situation. It's cool some people can do it. As far as I can see if you rent and have a car payment you cannot survive. Try to buy a home right now when the same houses that sold for 100k 12 yrs ago are going for 300k.
I’m not buying a home because I both don’t plan to be in this state forever and also don’t want to pay the high interest rates on a mortgage. My rent is about $200 more than an equal mortgage would be but I’m fine with that. My car is owned and I put a few hundred dollars in savings/retirement a month. About $800 a month goes towards paying off old debt from my early 20s and once that’s paid off I’m putting it all towards retirement.
Slaves have 0% unemployment and poverty. Why would powerless laborers leasing their labors be any better off?
First of all, you need to understand what the unemployment rate is. because people often conflate unemployment and inverse of the labor participation rate when they're different. So lets talk definitions
- unemployment rate: The unemployment rate measures the percentage of people over the age of 16 who aren’t working but are available and actively looking for work
- The labor force participation rate: The labor force participation rate is the number of persons in the labor force as a percentage of the working-age population.
In April 2000 the U-3 unemployment rate was 3.8%, the latest March 2024 numbers are also saying 3.8% U-3 unemployment rate. however April 2000 labor force participation was 67.3% meaning in reality 32.7% on working age people weren't employed. March 2024 labor participation rate is 62.7% meaning 37.3% weren't employed. so while there is "low unemployment" the in reality there are more working age people actually unemployed now that there were a previous generation. and most of them aren't being counted in official unemployment rate statistics.
I wont go in depth because theres a lot of unpack but I want to highlight a very important thing here. a crucial condition of being counter in the unemployment rate is that you are actively looking for work and the government needs to know you are actively searching. the primary way the government know of unemployment are people who are unemployed is people signing up to unemployment benefit programs other welfare programs tied to employment status or government job-searching assistance programs. so if you are going through private channels only that don't share the information with the government then the government doesn't know and doesn't count you in the unemployment statistics. If you've given up on finding a job altogether in desperation then you aren't counted in the unemployment rate and those people who have given up are usually poor.
Second thing to note is that it counts any employment. worked a gig for 1 hour only? congratulation you are no longer unemployed. doesn't matter if you earned minimum wage for that single hour and you cant afford living expenses you are not unemployed. some people working full time are having trouble being above poverty line then obviously part time people are going to struggle but atleast that unemployment rate is down.
Third issue is livable wages. Minimum wage is tough. and having minimum wage in a high cost of living city is a recipe for guaranteed poverty.
Very low wages combined with significant expenses. In the US getting sick can be very costly as well.
Many people are over employed with 2 3 even four jobs that do not pay well
If I remember correctly, the 3.8% isn’t the total percentage of unemployed people, it’s the percentage of people unemployed that are actively looking for work. If you’ve stopped working and aren’t looking, you aren’t counted. Stay at home parents that can’t afford childcare, people that can’t work because of physical/mental health problems etc aren’t counted. Put all those people back in and that number looks a lot different.
Many jobs do not pay substantially better than being unemployed.
Probably because it’s $8 for a box of cereal and $8 for a bag of chips now. My dad is super picky and only likes name brand in some (ridiculous things like milk too) but esp chips and cereal. I do his grocery shopping for him and almost shit myself when I saw that a bag of frito scoops was $8. He got the Meijer brand that day and was unhappy lmao.
It’s also $13 for a 12 pack of tp. Paper towel. Cleaning products are out of control in price even off brand. Don’t get me started on women’s things like tampons, pads, hair care products, hygiene products. I spend almost $200 every paycheck just on that kind of stuff alone. I do buy high end skin care and hair serum every 3 months but everything else is Pantene/off brand tampons/soap etc. That’s just household items not including food.
Doctors bills, copays, deductibles.
Car insurance, phone bills, internet, mortgage, property taxes, my electric bill is outrageous because myself and my dad work from home. Pet bills, pet food, vet bills.
I live with my fiance, my dad and 4 cats. All of us work (besides the felines lol) and make pretty good money. More than what a lot of people make who have kids and stuff. We’re doing okay but it’s still a struggle.
The cats are the problem. Those freeloading felines need to work!
That would interfere with their eat, nap, cuddle and bird watching schedule 😂 I do call one my supervisor since she sits on my desk while I work and micromanages in between naps. I’ve asked my non feline boss if we could put her on the payroll but no dice 🤷🏻♀️
Thank you for committing to the bit. That was great. 🤣
(For the record, my parents have six cats, so I get it. I also once asked if I could write my cat off on my taxes).
The government, through the Federal Reserve system, has devalued the currency by expanding the supply of money.
The average American must earn a dollar with their labor. The value of this labor is diminished when the government arbitrarily creates more dollars that are not connected to productivity/labor. It's a form of theft. This is also why the minimum wage doesn't actually matter. It's not about how many dollars you earn, it's about what each of those dollars can purchase.
The system is designed to keep wage earners occupied with unproductive talking points.
Because the job doesn’t pay enough to live outside of poverty. Think about a Walmart worker who grew up in the Bay Area. Even at a higher minimum wage the elevated costs of living keeps them in perpetual poverty.
Look at historic wage charts at least dating back to the 70’s and contrast against inflation and housing costs.
The gap widens every year.
Corporate greed.
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Housing, food, utilities, healthcare, transportation, breathing, corporate greed and the political lobbying therein too damn high, wages too damn low.
Because having a job doesn’t mean you have enough money.
Being employed doesn’t mean you make enough to live. I make 6-figures and still agonize over purchases because making that amount doesn’t mean as much as it used to.
Price gauging of energy , rent , interest rates , food & state legislature that protect greedy corporations which in turn make citizens pay high property , state income taxes
Because salaries are low/lower than the COL and because people have awful money management skills. I’m surrounded by people who make a pretty decent income living paycheck to paycheck, and they do shit that I wouldn’t even do (with a higher income). I grew up poor so everything we did at home was cheap. Broken cars we’d fix to drive, thrift stores, yard sales, etc so I’ve been penny pinching since I got out of college.
Having travelled through india I have a different perspective on what "poverty" means. I see hardship here, sometimes caused by bad luck and sometimes caused by serial bad decision making. People think they "deserve" a better lifestyle than they can afford which causes them to make bad financial decisions and can kick of a spiral of financial destruction.
A falling birth rate and short term immigration is probably the best thing to happen in the country in that case. Desperate immigrants will take the low paid jobs and as long as citizens are educated enough to know they need an education or skill to get a decent pay. The notion that you can work minimum wage and actually live comfortably (house in nice area, fancy car etc) is fantasy right now. Military service might be the best bet for people whose parents and the education system have not taught them basic life skills.
"Unemployment" only accounts for people who are actively looking for jobs. There are large amounts of people who are "not in the workforce" they don't count as unemployed, it's really just a bold faced lie used to make politicians look better.
There should be another metric:
% Gainful employment that pays above avg modern cost of living with surplus income after paying for: -average cost of degree for field (if a job requires a degree that often requires 50k degree + certs + years of unpaid exp = cost of degree) such as engineers, social workers, physicians, trades, teachers, nurses all require significant dedication in volunteership and internship hours.
-medical/dental/vision plans
-retirement plan
A lot of reasons. One being the unemployment numbers are frequently manipulated to make it look better than it is. A lot of those jobs are just minimum wage jobs, which were never meant to support a family or anything. Another being inflation. I'm about to sell my home for 50% more than I paid for it, and I bought it in 2017. A lot of companies raised prices during COVID, and people kept paying it so they never adjusted them back down. I'm sure there are more reasons as well
Inflation outpacing wage growth
There is a metric where if you are out of work for long enough you are no longer considered “unemployed”.
This was changed some time ago. So the 3.8 doesnt actually reflect how many people dont have jobs.
Shitty labor laws and not enough unions
It's not sustainable. I hope we solve this.
We’ve idolized unemployment stats without focusing on quality of employment
Because the cost of living has gone up so most ppl have two jobs. And one job by itself doesn’t pay a living wage
It's crazy expensive here. Everything is expensive. Every single thing. The previous generation lived a life of greed and excess and now we are all paying the price.
Dumb political decisions.
Cost of living is high. We waste money more than any other country. Along with taxing the shit out of everything.
3.8% unemployment but forced to live in desperate conditions. Ewww!!! 🤢🤦🏾♂️
because it's not 3.8 percent. more likely 20 something percent. additionally, wages are low that folks working full time are still poor AF. good luck everyone
Taxes on everything, inflation, no universal healthcare, the list goes on and on
Because the government is lying
Also once you haven’t worked for like 2 years you no longer count for unemployment. So the actual rate is likely much higher
FYI homeless people who are unemployed aren't included in those numbers. You could go to a city filled with the homeless, and based on how they run their numbers, the unemployment could be 0
We have a large group of people who are called The working poor ... Plus many homeless people have jobs / having a job or willingness to work is not the problem....
Because a lot of jobs don't pay shit.
My job doesn’t pay shit, it pays money. And boy am I glad, I’m pretty sure the grocery store won’t take shit as payment. I don’t know how all these people who get paid shit make it.
Because you can be employed and still broke.
Because people need 3 jobs to live.
An article came out about a city near me. The study said you'd need to make $55hr to live comfortably. Most make $20 or under. 100k a year used to be on the low end of rich. Now it's just barely living comfortably.
Most jobs aren’t really hiring. Most jobs are paying garbage wages way below the skill set.
Unemployment refers to people who are actively seeking jobs but can’t find someone. That definition excludes a lot of impoverished people.
Ignore the living wage piece for a moment.
3.8% of people who are looking for work don't have a job.
That's about 12 million workers. Assume an average of 1 dependent per and it's 24 million people.
Add in 12 million people (that's a guess) who have given up on finding a job, plus 1 dependent each.
48 million people who could work and their dependents who have to live on a practically non existent social safety net.
Because poverty is measured vs the median and the median is very high in America.
Record unemployment just means corporations are making more money. A good "economy" means wealthy people are making more money. Neither of those things pays people more.
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Unemployment is so low but underemployed is rampant.
Corporate greed. That’s the answer.
Also because unemployment numbers report only on people who report that they are unemployed (like people who receive unemployment benefits). It does not track people who have been unemployed so long they don’t report anymore.
Because companies refuse to pay a living wage despite profits
Because y’all keep having kids you can’t afford while racking up credit card debt and agreeing to outrageous car payments. Throw in the occasional payday loan and constant bad financial decisions all the while having the victim mentality. It’s the same things over and over with this sub.
A lot of people have jobs. Very few of those jobs pay enough for people to live off of them.
I highly recommend a book called “Poverty, by America” written by Matthew Desmond
Capitalism and corporate greed
It’s by design. This is capitalism working as intended. You can’t have people living in tremendous excess without having people live in poverty under this mode of production.
We tried giving poor kids money but it was wildly unpopular. Which is insane to me
Because a majority of jobs in the US don't pay a liveable wage
Are you kidding me? Most jobs don’t pay a living wage?
If you’re not looking for a job and not working you’re not counted as unemployed.
“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
watch youtube video, poverty in america is by design. its an interview of princeton professor who wrote a book on the subject. its very illuminating.
Greed and corruption at every level.
Capitalism
Unemployment is a false measure. The labor participation rate is a more accurate measure. To not be poor in the US you only need to do 3 things, graduate high school, do not have kids outside of wedlock or an other wise committed 2 parent in the home relationship and not be addicted to drugs or alcohol. Statistically that will keep you from being legit “poor”
Because uranus ain't cheap
can't really answer this with one variable. Laziness, parenting, Government involvelment, profit, greed, too much college, not enough college, not enough trades.......
As others have said, employment means little; but it should also be pointed out that 3.8% is nearing the lower limit for a "healthy economy"
3.5% is around where the economy starts to stagnate and there is a further risk of inflation
they stop counting you as unemployed if it's been awhile lol
unemployment doesn't take into consideration under employment, and also the statistic doesn't include those who have just left the job market from looking for a job.
It does not mean that 96% has a full time job with a living wage and affordable employer paid health insurance.
Unemployment just means people looking for jobs can’t find them. There are plenty of people not looking
Because poverty is calculated poorly, and is really just a metric of relative well being in the US. In the US, poverty is defined by pre tax earnings, food stamps, and EITC, but ignores all other transfer payments, thus it doesn’t count all income or equivalents, meaning that income is understated. Additionally, poverty metrics in the US are calculated by an “inequality” metric, in which the poverty line is calculated relative to spending by the 30th percentile of spenders on a basket of goods. This means that even if real household purchasing power were to double in the US today for everyone, the poverty rate would be the same.
The unemployment rate does not include anyone who’s gone more than a month without actively seeking employment.
With the US spending more than a trillion* a year to keep people on the dole, the motivation to get off the dole and get looking for work is low.
*In fiscal year 2022, the federal government spent $1.19 trillion on more than 80 different welfare programs. That represents almost 20% of total federal spending and a quarter of tax revenues in 2022 or $9,000 spent per American household.
Inflation due to fiat currency manipulation
Employment does not equal inflation rates
The unemployment rate doesn’t encompass anyone able to work. It’s a rate of unemployment among those looking for work. Many homeless aren’t actively looking for work or counted in the figure. The real unemployment rate is much higher if you count all able bodied people who can work.
Because we have been trained to be employees.
Well, stop being lazy and go get that third one!
Employment includes low-wage jobs and part time jobs. The median income in the US is just over 50k, which can be a decent income in many parts of the country but is poverty income in hcol areas.
Unemployment only counts people actively looking for a job. So how many people are out there that don’t have a job and aren’t looking
Inflation is crazy
Because the vast majority of current job openings are for people that don’t hold a high education status and/or will most likely make below 50k a year which is a struggle with today’s inflation. I’m educated with a 4 year degree and make 56k a year so I’m really no better off
HCOL
- artificial limits on housing supply in the form of low density zoning and things like SRO's being illegal
- artificial demand on housing due to demand-side subsidies and federally backed mortgages
The true unemployment number is called the U6. This is currently 7.4%. The number that's reported casually is deeply filtered data. Furthermore, when they look at the # of available workers they exclude senior citizens who are collecting SSI and working, but count those jobs as occupied by the "available work force". The U6 also adds in people working below the means, and who are not collecting unemployment.
Also the department of labor has a very specific definition of unemployment, such to be able to manipulate the perspective. Only those who are currently without a job and actively looking are considered. Those that have left the workforce completely (by choice or by circumstance) are not counted. This way they can lower the number than what it actually is (i.e. including all the homeless population)
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lol lmao
People choices in life
Poverty isn't related to just unemployment. Looking at as an outsider (not from the US), you have shitty wages.. and high cost of living in many areas... that's poverty.
The 3.80% is definitely a fluffed number
locking post as it's turned into 100% politics and zero percent poverty finance.