It is concerning that the top comment on this article is an attempt to divert the argument from the substance and implications of the article to numbers. It is the equivalent of responding to a statement that "the ship is sinking" with a detailed analysis of the technique to measure the depth of water.
The truth is not a number, but a fabric of information. There have been frequent articles describing the large number of layoffs due to the pandemic, and a number of articles reporting that a substantial number of Americans cannot afford an unexpected bill of $300.
If you are one of the fortunate people who make a living wage as defined in the Axios article you might well consider what it means if in fact half or more of the people around you do not.
The problem is the article isn't reporting a fabric of information. The article even calls their metric the "True Unemployment Rate". The name of the metric alone should give you pause when the situation is as complex as it is.
How do you know the “ship is sinking?” What unemployment number is necessary such that the ship is not sinking?
This article admits that the true number has been relatively much higher for nearly the entire history that unemployment has been measured by the federal government.
The problem with unemployment numbers is that you only realize that the ship was sinking after the fact. The exact line of percent unemployment (and length of unemployment) at which a society falls apart isn’t a known factor.
I'd trust the article more if I were confident that it wasn't an attempt to sell another ship that may or may not have more holes than the current one.
The point I've always taken away from the US's faniciful unemployment numbers is that the USG could be doing A LOT more research in this area, but instead chooses not to. The Department of Labor, or some other government agency, could publish many different metrics that explore the issue of unemployment in many different ways. Because like any social phenomenom, there are lots of different ways to slice this pie.
Instead the USG deliberately chooses not to, because they don't want the issue of unemployment explored. Congress could mandate that unemployment metrics be gathered in dozens of different ways, with dozens of different definitions for what it means to be unemployed. But they don't. This is the point, and really the only point that matters.
I would argue the number they report to press is the wrong one (U-3 vs U-5 or U-6), but a single figure is used for consistency and ease of consumption.
The truth is not a number, but a fabric of information. There have been frequent articles describing the large number of layoffs due to the pandemic, and a number of articles reporting that a substantial number of Americans cannot afford an unexpected bill of $300.
If you are one of the fortunate people who make a living wage as defined in the Axios article you might well consider what it means if in fact half or more of the people around you do not.