• Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    One way of juking the stats is to stop classifying people as “looking for work.” So after five years goes by when someone is on disability, the number of people “unemployed” goes down. People who work multiple part-time jobs aren’t considered “looking for work,” even when they’d prefer or need a full-time job. People working in the gig economy who get unreliable employment also “aren’t looking.”

    Basically, over half the workforce who needs full-time employment, especially for health insurance, only works part-time or not at all. None of them are counted, so unemployment gets calculated as going down.

    It’s a good example of capitalists not relying on objective data and making shit up, taking action based on the shit they made up, then being surprised when those actions don’t fix anything.