How many of these people are a) in the military, and therefore not counted as unemployed, and b) in- carcerated, and therefore not counted as unemployed?
> Start with the nation's stunning 4.2 percent unemployment
> rate, which is lower than at any time since the late 1960's,
> when the economy was artificially buoyed by Government
> spending on the Vietnam War....
Not that the economy is "artificially buoyed" today by any means...
> And Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution notes that
> income and other types of support for non-working people,
> like disability insurance payments, are much higher now than
> in the 1960's.
Hm. What is up with that? What kinds of disability insurance payments? SSI? From what I know from people I know, SSI is measly...if you've got private disability insurance it's better, but not many people carry it.
> But the Freeman-Rodgers study cites one group that has
> made significant gains in tight labor markets: young black
> men without a college education, whose non-employment
> rate fell from 48 percent to 36 percent between 1992 and
> 1998. Though adult men barely registered gains in
> employment or earnings in the regions with tight labor
> markets, the earnings of young men -- including blacks
> without a college education -- rose by about 10 percent.
Again, refer to question about how much of this group is in the armed forces or in jail. And why are their wages supposedly going up so much? Is it a matter of Mickey D's having to come up with 70 cents more an hour so the pay would be a whopping 7.70 an hour?
> "The implication is that a long extended boom can go a long
> way to resolving the African-American youth employment
> problem," the report said.
What? Causing the construction of more fast food places? Or more prisons? Or a more robust military?
> Mr. Burtless points to another disadvantaged group that has
> been helped by the robust economy: single mothers, whose
> non-employment rate fell from 43 percent to 31 percent
> from 1992 to 1998. Mr. Burtless says that sharp
> improvement is due in part to welfare reform but also to a
> healthy economy.
In part? How about 90/10?
> Here's one encouraging reading of the tea leaves, even if it's
> unlikely that overall unemployment will dip much further:
> Those groups in the worst economic shape -- unskilled
> young black men and single mothers -- respond well to tight
> labor markets and would benefit from future economic
> prosperity.
If you're in the position to benefit, you can benefit from an expanding economy. And how do you define "benefit"? Working for dismal wages with no health insurance?