Maybe itâs a local anomaly, but that doesnât track with my lived experience or that of family and friends. In 2022-2024, EVERY store and business was hiring. There were NOW HIRING signs everywhere. My place of work had trouble keeping people around because they were getting offers elsewhere for more. My kids had places tripping over themselves to hire them for the summer home from college. No way 1 out of 4 were âfunctionally unemployed.â
That only started changing in the second half of 2024, when the games industry decided to lay 20% of their staff off, or so it seemed.
What was other USiansâ experience of the economy during that period?
Thatâs pretty much propaganda.
I have no idea if theyâre goofy or not, but what I do know is that if youâre going to change how you measure unemployment, you need to go back and do that for past years as well if youâre trying to evaluate the job the Biden Administration did. And I strongly suspect if you do, you will find that the numbers improved under Biden. And theyâre about to get shitty as hell under Trump.
I agree that there are issues with how âthe economyâ is measured. I think the traditional measures are a lot better at measuring how the ownership class is doing rather than labor. But hereâs where he lost me completely in that article:
These numbers have time and again suggested to many in Washington that unemployment is low, that wages are growing for middle America and that, to a greater or lesser degree, economic growth is lifting all boats year upon year. But when traveling the country, Iâve encountered something very different. Cities that appeared increasingly seedy. Regions that seemed derelict. Driving into the office each day in Washington, I noted a homeless encampment fixed outside the Federal Reserve itself. And then I began to detect a second pattern inside and outside D.C. alike. Democrats, on the whole, seemed much more inclined to believe what the economic indicators reported. Republicans, by contrast, seemed more inclined to believe what they were seeing with their own two eyes.
So Republicans are seeing reality? Really? Iâm sorry, but I canât take anything else he says seriously after that.
Same as yours, although different sector and area. Problem i saw here was too many employers were used to âany job at any payâ employees. Places willing to pay people had no issues. Others screamed about âno one wants to work.â
This was written by a white guy, right?
Or, more inclined to believe their own confirmation bias
âThose banks and insurance companies are pulling out of areas, coastal areas and ⌠areas where there are a lot of fires,â Powell told the committee. âSo what thatâs going to mean is if you fast-forward 10 or 15 years, there are going to be regions of the country where you canât get a mortgage. There wonât be ATMs, the banks wonât have branches and things like that.â
Coastal areas, huh? Sounds like a developerâs dream for wealthy clients who donât need mortgages, insurance, or pesky poor neighbors ruining the view or attempting to access the beach in front of their new estates. Of course, these homes will only accessible by private roads, covered by private police/firefighters, and situated/built to withstand the short-term effects of climate change. If all that fails, an alert system should provide enough time to escape 
so residents can survive the worst by moving into their luxury bunkers.
And then we blow up the roads, bridges & fly a drone fleet over them so they canât escape?
It was written by a wealthy white guy who has, to his credit, been preaching that weâre measuring the economy wrong for over a decade. Iâm just not trusting him since he seems to have decided that Republicans are better at this than Democrats. He was also Comptroller of the Currency under Clinton. So heâs an old, rich, white guy.
I question the use of âunexpectedlyâ in this headlineâŚ
Yeah, @Docosc, me too⌠It was totally expected by any of us paying attention to actual news.
Also, while that is far from the worst graph Iâve ever seen, the lack of any ticks on the x-axis is quite a choice. So it looks like inflation peaked aroundâŚthe first 2 in 2023. Since 2025 just started and we are now at the second 2 in it, that would actually be somewhere in 2022. That doesnât seem like a great way to do things.
Trumpâs response was âBIDEN INFLATION UP!â Seriously, thatâs what he posted on Truth Social.
I mean honestly if uber-rich people want to self-pay to fortify coasts in largely uninsurable areas facing frequent disasters, I kinda think thatâs a valid use for them and their wealth?
I mean realistically some of these areas are environmental disaster zones.
But of course if we recognized that weâd expect some kind of relief or compensation to help out the regular people who wonât be able to live there anymore.
Yeah. Heard HR people griping about candidates who asked about âpayâ and âbenefits.â Like that made the candidates âneedy.â
- Nearly every place Iâve been to has hiring signs up, and is short-staffed. Also thereâs about a 50/50 chance whether Iâll recognize the workers or itâll be somebody new in the places I go to quite regularly. They are hiring people. But there arenât enough and many of them donât stick around long.
- Small mom & pop businesses are closing entirely as people retire and thereâs just no one else to take over.
- Places paying 30% above the going rate have had to shut down some operations, because thereâs just nobody to hire for them. And at least one ownerâs take on it is thatâs because there are just no apartments available and no housing that employees could afford, even though theyâre paying above the going rate. (There are very few houses available, and nothing priced for an entry-level worker.)
- One of the local shops gave its employees all a quite decent raise during the pandemic because it was The Right Thing To Do. But then they had to sell a year or so later because they ran out of runway to keep operating at a loss. The shop is still open, but I donât know how that all ended up. Another sold some months later and just shut down half their operations because they couldnât afford it.
- I had occasion to go back to my home city for funerals and such. The happeningest hoppingest part of the city was now all boarded up and shut down. Nothing but homeless people there. Other parts of the city were totally gentrified. Unlike my current town, lots of housing available - but it was all advertised as, and priced at, âluxury apartmentâ prices. More homeless people there too. (And I did some time homeless in that city, so I know what it used to be like.)
- Jobs everywhere advertising pay rates over double minimum wage, where it used to be like 20%-30% above minimum wage for the same jobs.
I donât know really what to think of that. Jobs are everywhere, and paying proportionally more than they used to. But also there are a lot more homeless people. Seems to be more divide. Despite even entry-level jobs paying proportionally more than they used to.
One thing I have noticed - used to be youâd go to the few places around that might hire for your line of work and theyâd choose from the few people around who applied for that work. Nowadays, people apply to every company they can find on the internet and companies have to choose from thousands of applications, and that seems to have put a big monkeywrench into things.
Also the housing issue is a big one and people keep trying to start some initiative to improve it, but the gears of bureaucracy turn slowly, especially when other people keep throwing sand into them. And you canât hire workers that canât afford to live there. And itâs tough to get hired when you donât have a stable place to live.
So is the economy good or bad? Eh, itâs complicated.
And they are increasingly using âAIâ tools to filter those applications. Iâve been seeing tips and tricks articles on how to make sure your resume makes it through these AI tools. That scares the hell out of me.