Record 94,610,000 Americans not in Labor Force

Can we say disingenuous figures? People are assuming that 1/3 representing all working age people means ALL of those working age people need/want to be in the workforce.

Teenagers of minimum employment wage don't HAVE to have a job while in school. True, a minority does to help the family get by, but not all. Some do want that extra pocket cash. Some would rather use the time to study more, or just F off like a normal teenager. And there goes a good chunk of labor right there.
**It's also more fair to simply go with students in general, as some college kids also don't work during their years of studies. But we'll stick with teenagers for clarity.

In case no one's noticed the obvious, the seniors lot is growing. Not all of them are going to retire, but a large portion will. * poof * There goes another portion of labor.

Many self-employed/contract workers figure out a way to not report income. How is the government supposed to know they worked if they don't report it in the first place? There ya go, hard-working folks not counted as actually working.

Stay-at-home parents, everyone's favorite "unemployed" group to forget about. Dudes & dudettes, whether or not I get a job or remain the SAHP is between me, the hubby & the finances. Sorry to skew your economic stats, but then again, if you're dense enough to look at a combined number of possible unemployed & not consider the hows & whys, then well, here's to hoping some brain cells eventually collide in the belfry at some point.

Now, take all those demographics' percentages, add them to the unemployed actually wanting work, and VOILA! Padded numbers! Any idiot should see that for what it is -- bullchit.

a reply to: Nyiah

Well the numbers seem padded towards a lower value. Look over my post I accounted for under 18 and over 65 and got 46% not 1/3, though if we took into consideration your points it could very well be closer to 1:3.

Lesson of the day? Qualify your terms properly before finding meaning of a given quantity. Further lesson, few will bother and so might as well bark. I'm out of the thread, sorry for hogging just got curious for a bit.

originally posted by: Vasa Croe
Wonder why they used the age of 16 as the start though. There are plenty of kids in highschool that don't work. If 16-18 were taken out, how many would that account for? Even then you would have those that are in college that don't work, so you could further limit it up until the age of 21-22 I would think.

Not that it matters....the economy is tanked and even when they do get out to find a job it is going to suck.

Not really just Obama's fault though....I would say there is a long history of nothing significantly improving under any administration.

There are about 22 million 16-24 year olds in the us. That means about 22 million high school age students. And 11 million college age, some of whom are either not in college or are working while going to school. According to the Census Bureau, there are 48 million people older than 65 who are included in the "labor force" but really shouldn't be. There are 20 million peole under age 65 in the US. So I'm surprised the number related in the OP isn't much higher.

Its really to bad that you honestly believe Obama has any power.

Great way to pollute an otherwise wonderful topic!

He must be another Fox News MK slave.

a reply to: carewemust
A 33% unemployment rate? That sounds closer to the truth than the doctored numbers that are officially reported.

a reply to: neoholographic

I like how everyone blames the gov, yet the gov has no control whatsoever on capitalism to create jobs for people. It is the small and big business that do it now(this includes institutionalization of education). When the gov tries something, people blame the gov. When the gov doesn't do anything to get people employed, they blame the gov. If this was communist like China, or Fascist dictatorship then the gov has control/some contol of creating jobs for the people. In Capitalism the gov is just there to keep small and big businesses in check and prevent evil(which they fail at in modern day). If the gov start doing mass hiring of unemployed, the businesses would blame the gov even more calling them fascist. They go oh know Gov is taking everyone.

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

Social Security enrollment of retired workers has been on a significant rise since 1996, with a current record number of those considered retired (43.7 million). The rise in retiree enrollment matches the rise of those "not in the workforce," if you trace it back a few years.

How does that work ?

Both my parents are retired , and still work as do millions of other retirees.

Which means they are still in the work force right ?

originally posted by: introvert
Ya know, this is a very interesting topic that needs to be discussed, but it's hard to do that when you talk about the topic and then sprinkle a whole lot of anti-Obama, Right Wing bull# on top.

Obama is the President of the United States, not god. He has very little power to create jobs without the approval of congress. Perhaps one of the reasons our county is not doing so well is because people believe Obama, or any president, is a magical position in which he can squat and squeeze out jobs at will.

Isn't that wonderful......ALL those stars by all those Obamabots.

But here's a fact:

abcnews.go.com...

President Obama promised Monday to deliver more than 600,000 jobs through his $787 billion stimulus plan this summer with federl agencies pumping billions into public works projects, schools and summer youth programs.

Take off your rose colored glasses and see reality for what it is.

a reply to: neo96

I'm curious what do you mean by "retired". This means they have quit a career and are collecting social security, correct? Are they now employed as a regular worker or 1099 or what? I don't know how this works. Can someone officially retire, take in SS, and go back to the same job and company for employment the following year?

originally posted by: pl3bscheese
a reply to: neo96

I'm curious what do you mean by "retired". This means they have quit a career and are collecting social security, correct? Are they now employed as a regular worker or 1099 or what? I don't know how this works. Can someone officially retire, take in SS, and go back to the same job and company for employment the following year?

You don't have to "retire" or quit your job to collect Social Security. If you have paid money into the system, you can start getting it back through SS at age 62. You get more if you wait. And if you work, you still pay in as long as you work. Social Security is not means tested or employment status related. If you paid in, you get it. The more you paid in, the more you get.

originally posted by: carewemust
Isn't this almost 1/3 of the entire U.S. labor force that's unemployed? Wow!

By percentages a couple months ago we hit a 40 year low point in the labor force participation rate. Due to the way unemployment is calculated however it doesn't really show up in that percentage. If you throw underemployment into the mix things are worse than than in the Great Depression, the only real difference being that these days we have food stamps instead of soup lines.

originally posted by: F4guy

originally posted by: pl3bscheese
a reply to: neo96

I'm curious what do you mean by "retired". This means they have quit a career and are collecting social security, correct? Are they now employed as a regular worker or 1099 or what? I don't know how this works. Can someone officially retire, take in SS, and go back to the same job and company for employment the following year?

You don't have to "retire" or quit your job to collect Social Security. If you have paid money into the system, you can start getting it back through SS at age 62. You get more if you wait. And if you work, you still pay in as long as you work. Social Security is not means tested or employment status related. If you paid in, you get it. The more you paid in, the more you get.

If you retire before official retirement age, such as drawing SS at 62, you are limited as to what you can make each year. If you have reached full retirement age, you can make as much as you want, but SS income, or a portion of it can become taxable.

Here's what pisses me off, some of you have quoted a 50%+ number for those being on public assistance, you really need to quantify those numbers. I work a full time job, pay my bills, but am considered on public assistance because I use VA for medical care, a benefit I earned giving 7 years of my life in service to my country.

Some of you all really need to figure out what life is all about.

a reply to: F4guy

Thanks, I learn something new every day. So that makes these numbers a little more meaningless. You may or may not be looking for employment at a given age, young or old. The reason could be due to already being set, or not. I just wish we could get more a meaningful assessment that everyone could agree on exactly what it meant, and track it's rate of change over time.

I don't know if there needs to be new metrics or what, but it seems few know what the current one's mean in full.

originally posted by: Vasa Croe
Wonder why they used the age of 16 as the start though. There are plenty of kids in highschool that don't work. If 16-18 were taken out, how many would that account for?

so they can add 50 mil to the number...

It's funny to see people complaining about the numbers because it's Obama lol. They have been collecting this data and using these statistics for years and because Obama has been a disaster the Obama followers can't accept it so there must be something wrong with the numbers.

You didn't hear these complaints when the numbers were not as bad but as soon as they began to tank the Obamabots say it must be something wrong with the data not Obama policies even though this data was collected under Bush, Clinton, Reagan and other Presidents.

originally posted by: neoholographic
It's funny to see people complaining about the numbers because it's Obama lol. They have been collecting this data and using these statistics for years and because Obama has been a disaster the Obama followers can't accept it so there must be something wrong with the numbers.

You didn't hear these complaints when the numbers were not as bad but as soon as they began to tank the Obamabots say it must be something wrong with the data not Obama policies even though this data was collected under Bush, Clinton, Reagan and other Presidents.

Please find more places to mention Obama in your post, I don't think your partisan ship is showing enough. You think you want to start an intelligent conversation, but you want to do nothing but parrot faux news, nice try, but you are too obvious.

So the unemployment numbers as speculated by some are really closer to 20%-and growing? How many go unreported of these numbers, see that already with the unreported ones who are no longer collecting unemployment.

originally posted by: SkepticOverlord
A couple things to keep in mind.

Social Security enrollment of retired workers has been on a significant rise since 1996, with a current record number of those considered retired (43.7 million). The rise in retiree enrollment matches the rise of those "not in the workforce," if you trace it back a few years.

Also... more importantly...

With the rise of the "1099 economy" economy, there are lots of people still working who would not be considered in the latest numbers.

I recently saw a report from Intuit (can't find it now, still looking), that indicated an estimated 60 million 1099 workers in the us, which is nearly tripled since 2001. And over 40% of those earn a full-time level income from their 1099 wages. These people are not included in jobs reports such as these.

It's estimated that the combined 1099 US employees of Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, SalseForce, Cisco, and Adobe (the biggest tech companies) is over 500,000. And the vast majority of "start up" tech/service companies (thousands of them) fill more than half their positions with 1099 workers. In fact, every Uber driver is a 1099 worker.


Forbes: Forget The Jobs Report -- Focus On the Freelance Economy

Does Silicon Valley Have a Contract-Worker Problem?

The US government just reminded companies like Uber why they could be in serious trouble


While the economy is surely in a difficult spot, these alarmist numbers are without proper context, and are politically motivated.

Based on our onservations I can assess that with the declining rate on participation we can see that as people retire from the workforce they are no longer being replaced by the younger generation at the same rate.

What we can see from that is that there is 1% less jobs available every year as the baby boomers retire and never replaced.

Awesome!!

Bureau of Labor Statistics Data