Comments by "Wojtek The Bear" (@wojtekthebear4958) on "Is the Unemployment Rate Lying to You?" video.

Yeah, no. The BLS does calculate for both underemployed and discouraged workers in their U6 unemployment rate and it's only at 9.7%. They use the U3 (the one commonly shown) as the "real" unemployment rate because it's more stable than the U6. It's also the best way to determine unemployment as the Labor Force Participation Rate is such a horrible measure because of all the external factors involved.
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Actually most economists think it has to do with the baby boomer retiring, more people claiming disability for whatever reason, and it taking longer for the younger generation to enter the workforce as they are now all but required to go to college for an extra four year. The first two factors alone accounts for about 65% of it. For my source, the Philadelphia Federal Reserve did an excellent paper on this titles: On the Causes of Declines in the Labor Force Participation Rate. Sorry I can't link it to you directly, it won't let me, but you can just type that into Google and it'll be the first result.
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Uh no, that's not how it works. The Labor force participation is the Labor Force/ total population, while unemployment is unemployed/labor force. You're working with different numbers. Also, the decline in the labor force is not caused by discouraged workers, but an increase in disability, the baby boomers, the largest population demographic, retiring, and it taking longer for the younger generation to joint he labor force due to an increasing necessity to go to school/train longer as shown by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve.
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Cheydinal No, because the denominator variables for both percentages are not the same, meaning that the percentages shouldn't be compared to each other. When each value goes up by a percentage point the nominal value of the people who join the labor force end up being much larger than the people who become employed because, once again, the denominators hold different values.
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Billy Anderson Or it's because these aren't facts? Strange, I know. The BLS does calculate an unemployment rate with both discouraged workers (those that left the labor force because they couldn't find a job), and underemployed workers (those working less than 35 hours that want to work more). It's called the U6 unemployment rate and is currently sitting around 9.7%, nowhere near the 20% many pundits claim. The video then claims that we should really be using the Labor Force Participation Rate, which is a horrible idea. As the Philadelphia Federal Reserve explains here in their article titled: On the Causes of Declines in the Labor Force Participation Rate (type that into Google as I can't give a direct link), the reasons for the decline in the participation rate are mainly due to non-recession factors. Most of it has to do with the baby boomer finally retiring, disability rises steadily through the years, and a longer education requiring Millennials to spend more time out of the workforce. Overall the article finds that 65% of the decline in the rate can be attributed to the first two alone.
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***** Generalizing much? I already showed how this video is being incredibly dishonest as the BLS does calculate an unemployment rate using both discouraged and underutilized workers, more than the video even asked for, and it's called the U6 unemployment rate. Similar to the U3 unemployment rate (the one often showed), its numbers have gone down. The LFPR is also a horrible measure of unemployment as there are so many external factors involved in it. As the Philadelphia Fed talks about in their paper titled "On the Causes of Declines in the Labor Force Participation Rate", they attribute a vast majority of it to an increase in disability benefits claims, an increase in the percentage of people retiring as the baby boomers are finally reaching the age of retirement, and a longer time for the younger generations to enter the workforce as they now have to be more skilled, meaning a longer time getting educated (college). See, I was able to disagree with this video without using any of the words from your generalization.
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***** I dislike this video because it's only telling one side of the story. I don't really care if it doesn't give a lot of info as it's not easy to do such a thing, but to only give info that supports your claim while completely ignoring the evidence otherwise is disingenuous. Their claim in this video was "The Labor Force Participation Rate tells the real news" in terms of unemployment, but they decided not to mention that it's an even worse measure for the reasons I described above. If they wanted to make a better claim, they should've said that the media should promote that U6 unemployment rate instead of the U3. That way they don't insinuate that the U3 is the only rate the BLS calculates while also getting what they want because the U6 unemployment rate includes the people that they want to include.
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***** Yeah, that's the problem. They said "the unemployment rate" acting like there is only one when there is, in fact, many. If they instead said the unemployment rate often showed isn't the true one as blah blah blah discouraged workers. They could have then pointed to the U6 and said that it does factor in those crap. It would have been more factually honest and still helped their argument as it is above the unemployment rate often showed. The U3 is sitting around 5% while the U6 is sitting at around 10%. I'm also not contradicting myself. I don't need the video to be super informative, just more intellectually honest. If they can spend a few seconds talking about what the LFPR is, then they can be more honest by removing that entire segment as its pointless and replacing it was a similar in length segment talking about why the U6 is better. It would take what? Two sentences? "The BLS has another unemployment rate that is rarely shown that does factor in these people called the U6 unemployment rate. That is the true measure of unemployment." It's still not the most informative video ever as there's a lot more they could be talked about, but it's much more honest with the audience as now the audience knows there's more than one unemployment rate and they don't have false knowledge about the LFPR being this magical measure of unemployment.
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***** That's not the last line though. The last line is "Remember this the next time you see a politician on the news say the unemployment rate is getting better". They aren't saying look more into it or think critically; they are saying to remember this specific video whenever the unemployment rate is talked about. That's much more insidious considering the disinformation in this video they passed off as fact, whether because they truly believed it or not.
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Billy Anderson Yep, you sound like a very intelligent person with all your grammar and spelling mistakes. I see no reason to not believe you. FYI: The Philadelphia Federal Reserve concluded that the Labor Force Participation Rate is down mainly due to the baby boomers retiring, the young taking longer to enter the labor force due to a need for a higher education, and an increasing amount of people claiming disabilities. The first of these being the most important. Also, if all the stock brokers thought we were heading towards a recession, they wouldn't be investing in the stock market. Considering the Dow Jones is about to break 20 trillion, it's safe to say that's not the case. After all, the stock market is basically just investor confidence, and these stock brokers seem to be really confident. After all, if a recession happens, the stock market plummets and all the investors lose a crap ton of money, so, if they truly believed a recession was imminent, they would sell their stock before the stock plummeted. Note: I am not saying a recession won't happen in the near future, only that there is no way of telling. That's the whole point of the efficient market hypothesis.
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