Correct. I was using labor participation rates. As a society gets depressed and has a hard time people stop trying (ie they no longer count as unemployed, which doesnt count the people who are no longer trying to get a job).

Similar to how as police systems fail, people stop reporting things assuming nothing meaningful will happen anyways. And then there's less reports of crime, so magically "crime is down" -- high fives to the police system... (/s)

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wilg 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I think that fudging the numbers to bolster your pet theory is not an acceptable way of looking at this data.

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vslira 3 hours ago | parent [-]

He wasn't fudging anything, his phrasing was

> ~18% of their working age people *do not have jobs*

Which is a correct interpretation of participation rate. His theory on the causes may be off, but his numbers weren't

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wilg 3 hours ago | parent [-]

His theory on the cause is wrong, and using the wrong number is dishonest here. I agree he more or less correctly cited labor force participation rate (still basically the best in the world) but badly misrepresented what that number is such that he should be apologizing and not doubling down. Dishonest.

	▲	zeryx 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I actually think we should only be using labor force metrics for everything, if someone stops looking because their depressed and can live at home - suddenly that's ok? I don't think we should stop counting people like that