This response is a bit less than helpful. Could you provide an example of a metric from this diverse set that fits what the OP is asking for? I feel like there are at least two use cases from their post:

* a metric that measures if people's jobs are paying enough to put food on the table

* a metric that measures whether people's employment matches their education?

Your first query is simply real wages. There are several real wage metrics in the bls data set. Here is a commonly referenced one: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

Your second query is more subjective. Most people would probably point you at the U6 underemployment number as that’s the most famous one. I like the employment projections series for this kind of question though https://www.bls.gov/emp/

For the second one I was hoping there was something like employment satisfaction, but thank you!

https://www.bls.gov/nls/ The longitudinal survey asks some job satisfaction questions though I’ve never tried to look for it by education level.

That real weekly wage data is basically why Trump almost and then did get reelected in one chart.

The more I look at that chart the stranger it gets. It feels like a good case for concluding CPI isn’t calculated properly

Why?

If you're talking about the spike in Q1 2020, there's nothing weird going on. That's from all the service workers getting laid off, which bumps up the average because they're typically lower paid, and no longer drag down the "employed" average.

Also, does it count the COVID checks?

>The usual weekly earnings data reflect only wage and salary earnings from work, not gross income from all sources. These data do not include the cash value of benefits such as employer-provided health insurance.

https://www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm#earnings

About the US specifically, your government reports underemployment numbers, as do almost every country report salaries distribution.

This is all extremely well-known public information gathered and distributed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which they compile for free.

Here are all (6) unemployment measurements that the BLS makes(U1 thru U6): https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

The BLS tracks damn near everything you could ever dream up economically: https://www.bls.gov/

Here you can browse every metric that the Federal Reserve Bank tracks: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/

Which metric(s) capture what he is talking about?

Take a look at the St. Louis FRED website and search for wages and wage growth.

FRED is a good resource. Do you know if there's a wage growth dataset that only analyzes job changes between companies?

Yes, it's extremely irritating every time people trot out the same copy-pasted complaints about the BLS unemployment rate and how wrong it is, ignoring the fact that the BLS publishes six different unemployment rates, which specifically address most of those complaints. It's a sign of terminal incuriosity and using only superficial and secondhand sources of information like news reports on the unemployment rate, and thinking this is enough to make you qualified to do critique.

> It's a sign of terminal incuriosity and using only superficial and secondhand sources of information like news reports on the unemployment rate, and thinking this is enough to make you qualified to do critique.

Agreed, I just dismiss complaints about the unemployment rate unless the poster/speaker mentions/alludes to U1 to U6.

The OP in this comment chain is just ‘old man yells at clouds’ in HN form, complaining about a lack of statistics without checking to see if those statistics are measured (which they are).

It's also a sign of intense hubris - the idea that thousands of labor economists have never considered something they thought of after 30 seconds of reading means that either a) the economists are all idiots or b) the reader is orders of magnitude smarter than them.

This is also a sign that communication of the semantics in understandable terms is pretty bad.

The communications from the BLS are quite good and easily understandable. The problem is that the people making these complaints aren't reading those, they're reading the mainstream reporting on the BLS stats, which is extremely lossily-compressed, and then assuming this makes them qualified to criticize the underlying stats. Journalists deserve some flak here for the superficial way they report on the numbers, but at some point it's on you to get the real thing before you start trying to correct it.

> but at some point it's on you to get the real thing before you start trying to correct it.

One thing is for sure is that people aren't going to do that.

Anyway, it seems disingenuous (or just completely irrelevant) to complain that people are attacking the BLS rather than how this is wielded to perpetrate a polemic.

My point is one doesn't have to go to the original sources, they simply have to ask themselves "is it likely no one has thought of this before?" before launching into a criticism...

This happens everywhere with lots of people in many different contexts. I call it the “‘why don’t we just’ disease”, or WDWJ Disease. When you’re in any leadership position, you have to stay especially careful to catch yourself from falling prey to this pernicious effect and behavior, and its equally debilitating sibling yak shaving when you over index on preventing WDWJ.

The mistake you are making is believing people are interested in the truth and the assumption that humans are rational truth seeking agents.

People mostly consume news as a form of entertainment with a dopamine hit from having their prior beliefs confirmed or for gossip. It is why the "news" is so popular.

I have thought quite a bit about building "real" news outlets but it is hard to not conclude it is a waste of time.

Reinforcing priors and gossiping is just what humans do. In the west, we really get off on a simulation of truth seeking even when the slightest bit of analysis can show the simulation is ridiculous.

The Titan submersible news event is really a great lens to grasp this in retrospect considering anyone with domain knowledge knew right away the truth that the Titan had imploded.

> You of course know that we have a diverse set of metrics for unemployment that capture all of what you are talking about right?

If I could never see another passive aggressive response like this again I would die happy.

You of course know that "you of course know _____, right" is the preferred HN rebuttal format, right?

Neck and neck with "Got an example of X?"

Active aggression is looked down upon in this forum

How about no aggression at all.

If you would like to live passively in all aspects of your life, far be it from me to stop you.

I, personally, care about things and are willing to passionately defend them, which is synonymous with aggression

> If you would like to live passively in all aspects of your life

Nah man, I'm clearly just talking about hacker news comments.

Being kind to people on here (and the internet in general) is a sign of good faith, and you are more likely to get your message across.

In this instance, maybe just assuming the person doesn't know about this other data, and educating them on that fact.

Being passive aggressive, or actively aggressive, on an internet forum is usually pointless. It indicates you're an asshole more than it serves as an indictment of whoever you are replying to, 100% of the time.