It sounds like we’re talking about people who kind of have a choice about not working. If the government pays more than a real job, or the spouse makes enough to pay the bills and you can’t find a job “as good” as the last one you had then you decide not to take the Starbucks gig and just reduce some of the more elastic expenses and call yourself discouraged. So it’s not people who looked everywhere and would have taken anything and now live in a box because not a single job was available to them after years of desperate searching.
You are most likely correct. However, I do not recall anyone discussing the large numbers of people who have “given up” making a claim that they are all homeless scavengers.
The claim is merely that Federal unemployment figures are understated by some unknown number because it is known that a number of people have, indeed, given up looking and are no longer identified in unemployment figures. Many of them are getting by with family support, reduced standards of living, etc.
The point of trying to identify the numbers of those who have “given up,” is that when we discuss the economic or financial health of the nation, employment and unemployment numbers are figured into that analysis. Having a significant, (for various levels of significance), number of people who are not employed, who could be employed, and who are not recorded in the unemployment figures, means that any discussion of the financial health of the nation is distorted by the absence of the correct figures.
You’re right, no one has made that claim. I just assumed that these discouraged unemployed were people who were now in very dire straights because that’s where I would be if I hadn’t worked in years. It’s also true that the numbers might be off if these people aren’t being counted, but I wonder how many of those people stopped looking for work because it turned out they actually had enough money without a job and jobs kind of suck, rather than that they seriously couldn’t find any jobs. That’s not really giving up so much as changing your mind and deciding not to work for a living, so those people should not be counted among the unemployed any more than a housewife or a full time student should be.
Yes, I understand how people “stop working” as in “can’t find a job”.:rolleyes:
I don’t understand how they can “stop working” as in “not eventually run out of money and become homeless street people.”
I tried to point that out earlier. A big part of it is household consolidation. That will be a major theme with aging baby boomers imho. In many cases you have elderly parents who have a home that is paid for but which they can’t maintain due to physical limitations plus they may not be able to care for themselves as easily and may need some assistance in that area.
On the other side of the equation you have middle aged children who were either unskilled or semi-skilled workers who have had their jobs moved offshore or to other more rapidly developing areas or even skilled workers who’s skillsets are no longer competitive. In the latter case, while retraining might be an option, even if they can manage to get the funding together, the fact of the matter is that there is definitely an age bias in hiring.
Take a old COBOL or assembler programmer who goes back to school for say Java or Ruby or something similar. Are you going to hire the 20-something or 50-something straight out of school with that certification? I mean seriously?
Plus if we have tens of millions of undocumented aliens making a living in this country, don’t you think it’s quite possible for a lot of discouraged workers to be making money off the books? If you sell something on ebay you’re SUPPOSED to report the income, right? Ahahaha. Yeah, sure you are. But even if everyone does, they’re still going to count themselves as not looking for work most likely because who would really consider that being self employed unless you’re really making a significant income doing it?
And that’s not to mention the countless more conventional ways that people can participate in the gray-market economy.