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A comment on 1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds. Parent comment

Re:1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wag... by II2II on Saturday November 21, 2020 @08:12PM (#25174006)
It is difficult to define "actively searching for work" with a consistent baseline across the decades, but it is not all that difficult to arrive at a definition that is valid for any given point of time. Simply consider the social norms for the era. If it is considered normal to have two income households at any given point of time, then it is legitimate to include an unemployed spouse.

Another route, similar to the one in this study, may be considering people who are actively searching for work and where the household income is below a certain threshold (likely based upon the composition of the family).

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Re:1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wag... by refurb on Saturday November 21, 2020 @08:40PM (#25174157)
normal to have two income households

The country is not monolithic. It could be considered typical, yet you might still have only 70% being two income households.

It would be silly to include the other 30% as unemployed.

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Re:1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wag... by II2II on Saturday November 21, 2020 @09:31PM (#25174413)
Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I suggested a hybrid of seeking employment and household income. It is similar to the one used by the study, except the article seems to use individual income rather than household income. Of course, there are still problems with that approach. For example: a baseline household income makes many assumptions about a decent standard of living, it would also be complicated to calculate due to variations in household size/composition and regional differences in the cost of living.

That being said, "seeking employment" is likely one of the worse indications of unemployment. People may be excluded or impeded from joining the workforce for a variety of reasons and stop seeking employment because of that. It is a rather long list: discrimination (age, disability, gender, race), accommodations for disabilities, access to affordable childcare, criminal record, level of education. While some of those can be addressed, they rarely are addressed in a meaningful manner. In those cases I find it difficult to treat not-seeking employment as a choice.

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