
If nearly 40% of Americans aren’t working, what are they doing? (2015) - paulpauper
https://qz.com/516023/if-nearly-40-of-americans-arent-working-what-are-they-doing/
======
LatteLazy
In case people wonder, the pre covid employment figure was around 60% for
working age people in the USA.

[https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employment-
rate#:...](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employment-
rate#:~:text=Employment%20Rate%20in%20the%20United%20States%20averaged%2059.24%20percent%20from,percent%20in%20April%20of%202020).

I bring this up every time people discuss working week length, productivity
etc. We have massively reduced the percentage of people working. But instead
of giving everyone 2 extra days off, we gave 40% of people all the days off
and made the rest work harder...

~~~
dforrestwilson
I can’t wait until we get enough Millenials in power to peg the retirement age
to life expectancy.

~~~
gonzo41
As a millenial. I'd much rather just have a 3.5 day working week.

~~~
icedchai
We already have that for most jobs, especially in software. You just have to
pretend to work the other 1.5.

~~~
anonuser123456
I've always found it much more challenging to pretend to work than to just
work.

~~~
icedchai
I agree. Fortunately, now that most are working from home, pretending is much
easier.

~~~
Fjolsvith
And easier to be qualified to do.

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michaelbuckbee
My pet theory is that labor force participation declines and "automation" go
hand in hand across all industries.

Automation isn't robots it's what used to be a 10 person marketing team doing
the same amount of work but being more productive as they're all much more
cross skilled and have more tools at their fingertips.

Same with some aspects of dev/operation. Same with some aspects of legal. Same
with some aspects of medical/surgery.

The net result is that you end up with more roles that are senior level and
less opportunities for entry level.

~~~
zaptheimpaler
I agree. I think the coming change is much bigger than anyone is prepared to
handle..

We are in a transitional period - the utopian endpoint of technology was
always to perfect/automate so much that there is no need for humans to work
(except on what you want to of course), but as we get closer we have no idea
what society is supposed to look like in that world.

Politicians still promise jobs, the Fed targets employment, the entirety of
society is built around the idea of working to make a living. Those ideas
don't even necessarily make sense in a world of increasing automation - at
some point if everything keeps getting 10x more efficient, there simply won't
be enough jobs of any kind to go around.

It means a transition to an entirely different way of organizing society - we
don't know what it will look like and its going to be a very bumpy ride.

~~~
TouchyJoe
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conquest_of_Bread](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conquest_of_Bread)

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lordnacho
For the older cohorts, isn't it possible people are doing informal work and
not reporting it?

As for the younger cohorts, it used to be a thing that you'd work a bit in
order to build up your CV. These days, it seems like a lot of things that you
could do simply don't count towards a career anymore, there's been a cultural
shift where many hiring managers don't buy that a job in another industry
helps much. Waiting tables used to be a just fine way to show you were able to
work, now you need an internship in a bank or you may as well not bother. Same
with many other professions.

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guerby
Little known fact on unemployment:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment#Limitations_of_de...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment#Limitations_of_definition)

"For the fourth quarter of 2004, according to OECD (Employment Outlook 2005
ISBN 92-64-01045-9), normalized unemployment for men aged 25 to 54 was 4.6% in
the US and 7.4% in France. At the same time and for the same population, the
employment rate (number of workers divided by population) was 86.3% in the US
and 86.7% in France. That example shows that the unemployment rate was 60%
higher in France than in the US, but more people in that demographic were
working in France than in the US, which is counterintuitive if it is expected
that the unemployment rate reflects the health of the labour market."

More unemployment by the official measure (normalized OECD) but ... more
people working relative to given population.

~~~
bovine3dom
I'm not sure this is that unintuitive once you know what unemployment means
technically: the key aspect of the definition of unemployment is that to be
unemployed you have to be actively searching for work. If more of your
population is actively searching for work, as opposed to less, it stands to
reason that more people might eventually find work.

~~~
guerby
Then you may have to question "lower unemployment is better": for example is
the explanation for the France/USA unemployment difference that more USA
people have completely given hope of finding a work and are rejected by
society?

In the media it's always "super high unemployment in old Europe, super good
low unemployment in the USA".

~~~
bovine3dom
My hunch is that the USA has low employment due to its terrible healthcare for
poor people; I get the impression that people there get sick and then fall out
of the labour market permanently.

I think we may be consuming different media. The narrative I hear is
(prepandemic) "the UK has record low unemployment but this is bad because it
is low quality work with high underemployment".

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take_a_breath
FYI, this article is 5 years old.

~~~
coldtea
In other words, it's probably much worse now...

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rossdavidh
"Some of the decline represents a positive trend: young people getting more
eduction [sic]."

A particularly unfortunate spot in the article for the editor to have missed a
misspelling. Even in 2015, surely they had spellcheck?

~~~
coldtea
> _Even in 2015, surely they had spellcheck?_

Well, eduction is a word, so it would have spelled ok.

~~~
rossdavidh
Aha! I have learned something today! Although, in this case, I'm pretty sure
they meant education, unless this is some sort of very subtle metaphor. But
yeah, spellcheck would not know that, you're right.

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adrr
They are collecting disability insurance.

[https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/briefing-
papers/bp2019-01.ht...](https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/briefing-
papers/bp2019-01.html)

------
peter303
56% of US population was not working in July 2020 according to BLS numbers. US
population is 328M. 144M are working civilians. Add 2M for military
employment. 44% employment rate.

~~~
peter303
Note in the last election a couple of candidates would have said the the US
unemployment rate was 56%, not 11%. They counted everyone who wasnt working as
unemployed, including 1 year olds and 90 year olds.

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pyrrhotech
I haven't had a job in over 2 years. What I do:

\- building an algorithmic trading bot

\- play video games, mostly strategy with a few RPGs and platformers

\- exercise for 30 min - 1 hour every day

\- do all my own cooking, house work, take on DIY projects

\- read books, mostly fantasy, sci-fi and science text books for pleasure

I'm much, much happier than when I was employed as a software engineer. I
highly recommend people to save money and leave the workforce and instead live
a life of leisure as a capitalist and independent scientist.

~~~
pojzon
How do you plan to get back to work-force after the money you saved up run
dry?

Majority of software engineers are able to save up for few years forth of
expenses by not going into any major investments.

To give an example - I can stop working for 3 years now, but Ill have huge
issues explaining that afterwards. And if I plan to build a house - there is
no option for me to stop working for the next 10 years.

Not everyone is in so proviliged place.

~~~
pyrrhotech
I'm very frugal, it would be difficult for my stash to be depleted. My
conservative long term investments provide more than enough cash flow for my
basic necessities - I only put extra in the algo for now, though the algo is
less volatile so far than my long term investments.

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k__
My guess: a huge part of the 40% are children

~~~
tonyedgecombe
The labor force participation rate is a measure of an economy’s active
workforce. The formula for the number is the sum of all workers who are
employed or actively seeking employment divided by the total
noninstitutionalized, civilian _working-age_ population.

~~~
khuey
Children are excluded, but the elderly are not. Prime-age (25-54) employment
rates are quite a bit higher than 60%.

~~~
ls612
Pre Covid prime age employment rates were 80% or so. The remainder is mostly
stay at home moms and grad students.

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trevyn
Vibing.

If this whole meditation trend reaches its logical conclusion, you'll
understand.

