Quote:
Originally posted by bilmore
Did anyone ever post definitive info on the "discouraged workers" whose massive and growing existence showed the lie of the new eco-stats?
If not, I found some, here.
(DoL stats track this group quite precisely, and, by gosh, the number is lower than usual for this unemployment rate.)
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(1) No one said the stats were a "lie." At least not that I can recall. The unemployment rate is what it is.
(2) Luskin is responding to Krugman. I don't think anyone here quoted or relied on Krugman in this regard, though the skekster can speak for himself.
(3) Somehow, people are talking past each other about "discouraged" workers. E.g., Brad DeLong
said the following about six weeks ago:
- Something like 1.5 percentage points of the rise in the unemployment rate that we would have expected to see from such a decline in capacity utilization has not been there--has been taken up in a rise in discouraged workers and a reduction in labor force participation much larger than one would have expected given the shift since the end of 2000 in the unemployment rate.
He doesn't appear to be using the term in the specific way that Luskin and the federal government are, and the effect on the employment rate he identifies (~1.5 points) is substantially higher than the percentages Luskin is talking about. Rather than assume that someone is lying, as Luskin does, it seems to me rather more likely that these people are talking about different (but related) things. But I haven't figured it out yet.
(4) On your underlying question, here is another datum from DeLong:
The employment-to-population rate has dropped sharply in the last few years.
