The absolute strictest sense of the word unemployed simply refers to a person who is not professionally employed, lacking a job. At the same time, an elderly retiree is not the conventional type of "unemployed" person, though they do not have a job of any kind as someone who has retired. The American government's definition of unemployment--although words are arbitrary constructs and objective concepts and necessary truths about them, which words are assigned to, are what really matters--goes further than this sort of clarification, in the context of an equation where unemployment is calculated by dividing the number of "unemployed" people by the total number of employed and unemployed people (the labor force) and multiplying the results by 100.
This definition treats people as unemployed only if they are taking active steps to find or secure a job or have done so within the previous four weeks. Since this definition excludes people who had last searched for work outside of this timeline, who need jobs but have given up their pursuit out of despair, or who are employed but do not receive enough hours to get by (making them insufficiently employed), it is woefully erroneous in some ways and also does not account for economic issues for the employed. It is not only that it is not as complete or precise as it could be, like Plato's description of a human as a featherless biped. The definition is outright logically incorrect because of what it treats as irrelevant.
The selectively narrow scope is incredibly misleading. Even if all of the reported statistics are otherwise true, which as any rationalistic person can easily know is unverifiable at best (due to hearsay, extrapolation of one sample size to the whole, and so on) [1], the calculated unemployment rate still does not necessarily reflect the actual number of people who are unemployed in the sense of hoping for or agonizing over a hypothetical job. The ones who have not actively sought out work within what is ultimately an arbitrary timeline of four weeks prior might still want work on some level or truly need it. All the same, they are kept out of the calculation.
Someone discouraged by a lack of success and consequently has not directly submitted applications for the last 40 days or done any other such thing, yet still is available for and open to future employment, is excluded from consideration. The worse the job market, the more severely this exclusion can misrepresent the situation. A higher number of people who have current jobs and a lower number of people "seeking" work according to the way characterized in the calculation in no way entail together that the job market is flourishing. The unemployment rate according to U.S. federal statistics, aside from all the epistemological issues that statistics such as this have at a minimum, could decrease and the nation's workers or aspiring workers could still be in awful shape.
Again, the manner in which this equation is extraordinarily incomplete makes it erroneous in one sense. The unemployment rate, though even a genuine unemployment rate of 0% would still not mean that workers are not financially struggling, nonetheless could be used by politicians of any party to make their ideas sound more appealing. Someone in office can reference the calculated rate as if it reflects well on them, when in reality, even if every variable is exactly what they claim it is, there are so many factors left out of the unemployment rate that it is useless on its own for evidencing the real economic health of the nation. I will emphasize once more that all of this is on top of the inherent epistemological problems with statistics such as these. Accurate or not in a given case, the unemployment rate as presented by the American government at a minimum neglects vital aspects of financial stability within the country.
No comments:
Post a Comment