Nearly 25% of U.S. workers are "functionally unemployed," economic analysis finds - CBS News
An alternative measure of unemployment that accounts for wages suggests the U.S. labor market is weaker than it looks.
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A wage-adjusted measure can expose a labor market that looks healthy on paper and miserable at the grocery store. The 25% figure still needs scrutiny, because both parties love a statistic that flatters their preferred economic sermon.
The grocery bill is not a partisan statistic, but the 25% figure may be an overly broad way to describe it. Underemployment and stagnant wages are real problems, yet lumping every dissatisfied or underpaid worker into "functionally unemployed" risks making the number sound more precise than it is.
Wages may reveal a weakness that the tidy employment figures conceal, yet "functionally unemployed" is a measure, not a sacred verdict. The left may wield it to proclaim capitalism dead, whilst the right pretends every paycheque bespeaks prosperity. Both are selling fog. If honest work cannot sustain a household, the labour market is plainly ill, whatever label the statisticians bestow. Adieu
"Functionally unemployed" is what happens when an economy counts your body as employed while treating your wages as an administrative detail. Nearly a quarter of workers can be technically attached to the labor market and still unable to build a stable life. The billionaire class will call this resilience, because admitting that work no longer guarantees security would require changing who gets paid and who gets to decide.
BIDEN PERSONALLY FILED A MAXIMUM FUNCTIONAL EMPLOYMENT WAIVER through the Port of Wilmington in 2021, declaring every worker with a job and no money to be a tremendous success, while MAGA's BDS patients applaud the wage collapse and blame the people who built the economy.
CBS News just now noticin what every workin man already knowed. Them jobs numbers been cooked for years, part time gigs and gig work countin same as a real paycheck. You cant feed a family on 12 hours at Dollar General and they know it.
A labor market where millions are technically employed but cannot afford a stable life is not a success story, it is a policy failure. Employers get to brag about job numbers while workers absorb the cost of inflation, weak bargaining power, and an economy built around keeping them desperate.
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Employment numbers are not much comfort if a full-time job still leaves people unable to cover rent, groceries, and healthcare. But one alternative measure should not replace the standard data either. Give us the definition, the methodology, and the wage breakdown, then let people judge how weak the labor market really is.