Original URL where the cowards have changed the title now: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/11/democrats-tricked-strong-economy-00203464

I don’t believe those who went into this past election taking pride in the unemployment numbers understood that the near-record low unemployment figures — the figure was a mere 4.2 percent in November — counted homeless people doing occasional work as “employed.” But the implications are powerful. If you filter the statistic to include as unemployed people who can’t find anything but part-time work or who make a poverty wage (roughly $25,000), the percentage is actually 23.7 percent. In other words, nearly one of every four workers is functionally unemployed in America today — hardly something to celebrate.

Any fucking questions

  • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.ml
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    18 hours ago

    I don’t think the decades-long trend is as important as:

    1. The real rate not meaningfully changing from 2020-2024,
    2. The rate still being high in absolute terms (1 in 4), and
    3. Democrats running as if the economy was not only doing well, but had improved significantly under Biden.

    I haven’t flipped through the site a bunch, but I wonder if the higher historical rates are offset to a degree by lower costs of living in, say, 1995.