This metric of underemployment is captured in U-5 and U-6 in the BLS statistics.

It's less common to report, but in the aftermath of the financial crisis I remember hearing more about it. You can construct a chart in FRED that covers it:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1JWGw

No, you don’t understand.

As nerds we possess unique capacity for generating insights via thinkin real hard about stuff, and everyone else is a great big dummy who could not possibly have thought of it already.

Economists get things wrong all the time. It’s not about others not possibly have thought of it already, it’s about the fact that policy and politics is still driven by other measures that are inaccurate.

Just because economists get things wrong, does not imply that therefore they can be, and need to be, corrected by computer programmers with superficial understandings of the field. You can both be wrong.

This is like arguing that politicians don't need to be corrected by non-politicians, or that people with no understand of programming can't criticize the tech industry.

No one is arguing that being a computer programmer gives a person unique insights here.

False equivalence. Politicians aren’t scientists, and people do criticize programmers all the time. I got at least 3 complaints at work today about bugs in our software.

Saying that economists are scientists and therefore above reproach from non-economists ignores the way that ideology and research become intertwined whenever public policy is involved. Saying "trust the science" at all times, even when the scientists in question are neoliberal technocrats is how you end up with the populist backlash against "trusting the science" that America is presently going through.

Obviously people criticize can and should criticize programmers, that's the point.

Please take a look at the guidelines

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Notably:

> Be kind. Don't be snarky

> Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.

If the analysis in the public discourse doesn't capture what matters, that's a problem, and that some more obscure report contains useful information is only a minor mitigation. If anything I'd say highlighting that obscure report is a perfect example of nerds using their abilities to contribute to the public discourse.

Econ nerds are nerds with a different focus than coding nerds. Both are still nerds.

#ImAnEconNerd

I'm not sure household debt is a great indicator. Someone that has a mortgage will have much more household debt than a renter, but also not have to pay rent.

This would need data to contextualize.

You could argue household debt is just another form of rent, where you “rent” capital from the wealthy in exchange for paying interest on a monthly basis. Just because you don’t pay a rent directly named as such doesn’t change the substance of it.

It's a very different form of rent though, namely because the mortgage borrower has a lot of collateralized debt and the mortgage borrower owns the appreciation (or depreciation) of the property (proportional to their equity).

A home dweller is paying "rent" to the government as property taxes, possibly indirectly through a mortgage.

I don't think it is proportional to their equity. The borrower owns all appreciation and depreciation.

Debt, within reason, is just a tool. It provides leverage and it lets you buy things for which you don't have cash-in-hand--houses in particular. It can also encourage overspending (something that car dealers capitalize on) but that's another story.

Exactly my point. Rent and mortgage debt is functionally very similar and total household debt wouldn't capture rent obligations.

Don't matter. You still have the debt. If you lose your job in a depression, odds are no much other people will be in the market to buy your home.

The amount of equity you have in your home matters. Most recessions do not take 20% off home values, so people with conventional loans are pretty safe. Even the Great Depression just cut valuations about 35%.

If you lose your job in a depression there will be plenty of people willing to buy assets at a discount. If you have equity in your home then your position will be net positive. About half of all mortgages have an outstanding balance less than 50% of the home's value.

That kinda works in the abstract, but it's pretty risky for any individual house. If your house was somehow a representative slice of all US housing, sure maybe it won't drop 35%.

But if you owned a house in Detroit from 2003-2010 it might have dropped 70-80%. Or, more on point for many on HN, if you own a house in the Bay Area worth $2-$3M with 25% equity, and the tech job market collapses, then you might get completely wiped out.

I think debt is good, actually, for most middle class households, and they're actively trying to increase their debt because that results in greater cash-flow, more savings, and more security in terms of retirement. That's why buying a home is Goal #1 for most Americans.

Home mortgage debt is mostly "good" debt for middle class households. Pretty much any other type of debt is a net negative in financial terms. There are less tangible benefits to owning a newer, more reliable car for example, so it can be a bit murky. General consumption debt is a bad bet for pretty much anyone.

What if I use debt to invest or to buy assets that increase productivity of my company?

Or for some loan you need to pay monthly 5% of your income (for iphone or car), and other loan need you to pay 50% of your income (mortgages). You cannot count them in the same way...

What if I use debt to invest?

Or for some loan you need to pay monthly 5% of your income (for iphone or car), and other loan need you to pay 50% of your income (mortgages). You cannot count them in the same way. And mortgage can have 1% interest rate or 6%...

Similarly debt that got you a medical degree is different to debt on a shiny new car. A subsistence farmer in the DRC might have less debt than a college graduate, but that doesn't matter if the college graduate's earning prospects are excellent.

(No comment on the current reality of medical debt, of course. Just a general principle.)

Whatever metric or scenario you can think up, I guarantee governments, think tanks, private data companies, or universities are already tracking (or attempting to)

There is a huge quantity of data about the US.

At least though 2024. It remains to be seen how much of that data is still being collected in a post-DOGE world.

Even if they are, it's not very useful if they have an adversarial relationship to us, the worker. Government is the only one listed above that is supposed to be the champion of the worker, but when was the last time that was true? At some point, you have to do your own digging. Trust but verify.

This entire thread is nothing if not a perfect indicator of how difficult it is to get an good/accurate gauging of employment health.

And that's before you even get into bad actors or actors with a POV to push who selectively highlight one metric over another confounding metric.

AND you’ve reduced unemployment by not just one, but two jobs. Success! /s