| ▲ | Ask HN: If 160M Americans are employed, what's the unemployment rate? | |
| 2 points by paganartifact 9 hours ago | 4 comments | ||
340 million total Americans. 160 million were employees last year. So, raw figures alone, doesn't that mean over 50% of Americans are unemployed? | ||
| ▲ | Bender 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |
4.3% in May. [1] [1] - https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate | ||
| ▲ | latexr 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
> So, raw figures alone, doesn't that mean over 50% of Americans are unemployed? No, because “total population” is not the same as “total employable population”. There are children and retired people. Also it’s not clear how “employees” are counted, do self-employed and small business owners count? There could even be more people who don’t count for employment statistics, like those with severe disabilities. | ||
| ▲ | mikgp 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
Including under-18s and retirees? | ||
| ▲ | anovikov 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | |
Even out of adults, lots and lots of people don't look for jobs and happy not working. People have no moral obligation to work their asses off. I don't know how about Americans but i look at the people i know, they are 25-50 years old, and few are employed in a traditional sense. Only 7.3M people are unemployed, in addition there are 1.7M who are not unemployed in traditional sense, but would like to work in theory, just kinda gave up trying (marginally attached), and another 500K who completely gave up a long time ago, but would like a job if they could get one - just no longer believe they could. The rest just don't need a job and don't want one and these people are to be celebrated rather than being treated as a "problem" to solve. | ||