Fuzzy Unemployment Math

if the unemployment rate is 8%, what is the probability that favors that 3 out of 10 people randomly sampled are unemployed?

I've taken a tremendous amount of MATH courses .. and for the life of me .. I just can't figure out HOW in the world any bit of what Is happening (with these latest losses and all the other information you have included here) that they can get ANY sort of positive out of this at all .. because, like yourself .. the TRUTH is that the unemployment rate (with underemployed/totally discouraged/dropped out workers included) is definitely 20%+ at this time (it wouldn't really be a surprise to find in actuality that 1 in 4 is the truth)).

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Bob Higgs points out that the unemployed and underemployed probably reached 50% of the U.S. workforce during the Great Depression. I don't think even that statistic about the employed workforce catches the extent of the misery.

At the start of the 1930's approximately 25% of Americans lived on farms. As historians have reported, farm income plunged during the Great Depression. Between 1929 and 1933, one third of all farms were lost to foreclosure. Many more earned no income but were able to survive.

Theoretically, if 1 person could produce the entire US GDP, everybody, except that person, could be unemployed and there would be no recession.

Thus employment doesn't matter.

Yes, everybody (except that 1 person) would be on welfare, but if that's a problem, we could give everybody a desk, an office space, call him/her a gov't employee and pretend that they have a job.

Right now my wife is looking for work after taking a few months off to have a baby.
There are TONS of jobs out there for those willing to work. She's sifting through offers and temp assignments trying to pick that which best suits our needs.
Yes it is true that few of those jobs pay $20/hr with full benefits, but that's the way it goes.

Granted I wasn't around in the 1930s, but I'm positive that people did not go for lack of work because they were offered jobs that they felt were beneath them.

The fact that there are "tons of jobs" for her to sift through alone doesn't really mean much. It's a big economy - of course there are tons of jobs. The problem is that there are estimated to be about six job-seekers per job offer. I wish your wife luck in her search, but the fact that there are a lot of offers doesn't really mean the job market is healthy or that people are unemployed because they are rejecting jobs they think are below them.

My point was that she will choose her next job as opposed to desperately taking anything.
There is no comparison to the Depression.
Anyone who is unemployed right now is that way by choice.
Perhaps they cannot find a job in their chosen field, or it doesn't pay what they think they are worth, or they don't like the hours, or unemployment hasn't run out, but I find it very difficult to believe that anyone is unemployed because they can't find a job.

People are soft.

RE: "Anyone who is unemployed right now is that way by choice."

Are you sh***ing me?

Look - if that's what you've gleaned from your little anecdote then you and your wife seem to be in a pretty secure place right now. That's fantastic, but don't even try to generalize.

No, I'm not shitting you. The work is there for people willing to do it. But Americans have become soft and proud.
There's a restaurant up the road that is always looking for help.
Would you wash dishes if that's what it came down to? I don't think you would. I think it would be beneath you to do menial work like that. I bet your hands don't fit into pots and pans.
There's an egg farm a few miles away that always needs help. So much so that they have to import illegal aliens to do the work since they can't find any Americans willing to work in the stench of chicken refuse. Would you work in that ammonia filled atmosphere if that was the only job available? I don't think you would. I think you are too soft and too proud.

Yeah, stick to your surveys and don't look around. Believe your studies and not your eyes.

I've washed dishes for a living before and I'd do it again if I needed to. I'm thankful I don't need to. But that's all irrelevant. Just like I said above - of course your wife has a pile of help wanted ads. Of course the restaurant is hiring. It's a big economy. Of course there are jobs out there.

The problem isn't that there aren't jobs out there - the problem is that there are so many less jobs than job seekers. If every single person sucks it up and agrees to work for whatever job will take them at whatever price they'll take them at, somewhere around 83% of people looking for work still won't be able to find work. THAT'S the problem. Of course there are jobs. The question is how many jobs are there relative to job seekers.

I believe my eyes - I'm glad you and your wife are doing so well, but I have friends that are sending out dozens of applications and getting rejection after rejection - and I have other friends that know they're on the cusp of being laid off (NOT their choice, by the way). And this is in D.C., where the labor market is relatively strong right now. Where do you think these surveys come from? They come from what's actually going on in the real world. If you are doing fine that's great, but you need to look a little farther afield than that.

My point is that there is no comparing current unemployment to the Depression, because during the Depression you did not turn down a job.
You said "If every single person sucks it up and agrees to work for whatever job will take them at whatever price they'll take them at...". That sounds almost like you are agreeing with me when I say people are turning down work. If you agree that people are turning down work, then wouldn't they be unemployed by choice (the choice to turn down work)?
People didn't do that during the Depression.

Or are you being your typical disingenuous hair splitting self.

Some people are turning down work. Or, to put it more accurately, some people think they can get a better offer if they wait a little longer and perhaps they have the savings or a spouse's income that makes waiting a little longer feasible. Did I ever deny that? That seems like an eminently reasonable choice to me.

What you said was "anyone who is unemployed right now is that way by choice" and "Americans have become soft and proud" and "I find it very difficult to believe that anyone is unemployed because they can't find a job".

Now, if you had said "some people are still unemployed because they're holding out for a better option", of course I'd agree with you. You didn't say that. That's not splitting hairs or being disingenuous. If you think that "anyone" who is unemployed is unemployed by choice, then you have no concept of what's going on in the real world right now. And even the portion of people who have actually turned down job offers (and come on - this has got to be a small portion of the unemployed population) are still arguably involuntarily unemployed, despite the fact that they made a choice to stay unemployed a little longer. Current unemployment is still not a voluntary phenomenon.

You've been accusing people of being soft and proud and saying that if anyone is still unemployed it's their own choice. Tell me honestly - what percent of the currently unemployed population do you think has been offered a job and has turned it down?

And even the portion of people who have actually turned down job offers (and come on - this has got to be a small portion of the unemployed population) are still arguably involuntarily unemployed, despite the fact that they made a choice to stay unemployed a little longer.

So people who turned down work are involuntarily unemployed?
Hmmm, turning down work is a choice.
Involuntary means not by choice.
You contradict yourself in your effort to both agree and disagree at the same time.

Thanks for reminding me as to why I usually ignore your posts, and will continue to do so in the future.

Toodles!

DK,

What is the optimum number of job seekers per job?

I'm not sure what you mean - what do you think is the highest optimum number of job seekers per job? I don't think there is such an optimum. I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Six is extremely high by historical standards. Whatever "optimum" you're preoccupied with, the point is it is not an easy market to find a job in.

You called 6 job seekers per job a problem. I'm not disagreeing with you, but there is no context there, just something that sounds scary.

Putting a number like that in historical context seems near impossible to me.

Impossible? It seems to me an obvious way of providing that context is to look at the same ratio over time, right?

The one to six is from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. It far exceeds anything that survey has registered in it's history (which I think only goes back ten or fifteen years). For before that, the Conference Board and the NBER has similar "job openings" series you could look at.

A whole 10-15 years? Thanks for making my point.

According to people who were living in the 1930's, the unemployed took any work they could find. A few million adult workers actually roamed the country as hobos, leaving their homes and families to seek work and food wherever they could find it. Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" may be fiction, but survivors I've known tell me it was an accurate depiction.