Yeah, it's just downright misleading to qualify someone working a full time job making $24k/yr as unemployed. The US national minimum wage, believe it or not, only amounts to $15k/yr for full time employment (40 hrs/wk!).
I think you could certainly call these people "poor", but not unemployed. That word means something different.
Sure the term might not be ideal but it serves a purpose. Living in the current US with 24k a year is miserable (more or less depending on location).
When people bring up unemployment in terms of public policy, they generally are discussing actionable problems. Like "the unemployment rate is 6% so the gov should make incentives to hire more people".
These discussions could (ought to) include people that can't afford a car in the non-walkable US, or who have to live with relatives or roommates because affordable housing is a fantasy. "Maybe someone working full time should be able to afford their own place and eat more than rice and ramen"
Someone making 15k a year working 40 hours is functionlly unemployed, in every sense of the phrase imo
> Someone making 15k a year working 40 hours is functionlly unemployed, in every sense of the phrase imo
We have a much better metric for that though, which is the poverty rate.
You can be employed and in poverty and you can be unemployed and not be in poverty. You can even be earning less than a living wage and be out of poverty if you have savings or other financial assistance from family, etc.
Tracking unemployment for what it is makes sense. Muddling the term doesn’t.
> Like "the unemployment rate is 6% so the gov should make incentives to hire more people".
So like, to make those people earning under 24k get a second job?
I don't see how you can use unemployment rate to justify making jobs when it already includes people who have jobs. The two need to be split up so the real number can be used for that argument.
That's earning federal minimum wage. 29 States, including many of the most populous states, have higher minimum wages.
> The CPS does not determine whether workers are covered by the minimum wage provisions of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) or by individual state or local minimum wage laws. The estimates of workers paid at or below the federal minimum wage are based solely on the hourly wage that respondents report (which does not include overtime pay, tips, or commissions). It should be noted that some respondents might round their hourly earnings when answering survey questions. As a result, some workers might be reported as having hourly earnings above or below the federal minimum wage when, in fact, they earn the minimum wage.
> Some workers reported as earning at or below the prevailing federal minimum wage may not in fact be covered by federal or state minimum wage laws because of exclusions and exemptions in the statutes. Thus, the presence of workers with hourly earnings below the federal minimum wage does not necessarily indicate violations of the FLSA or state statutes in cases where such standards apply.
> Estimates of the number of minimum wage workers in this report pertain only to workers who are paid hourly rates. Salaried workers and other workers who are not paid by the hour are excluded, even though some have earnings that, if converted to hourly rates, would be at or below the federal minimum wage. Consequently, the estimates presented in this report likely underestimate the actual number of workers with hourly earnings at or below the minimum wage. BLS does not routinely estimate the hourly earnings of workers not paid by the hour because of data quality concerns associated with constructing such an estimate.
> Several states have established minimum wage rates that exceed the federal level. (Information on state minimum wage laws is available at https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/state.) Users should be cautious about comparing state estimates with CPS estimates in this report because of differing statutory minimum wages. It also should be noted that the CPS sample is based on residence; workers report their earnings on their job, which may not be located in the same state in which they live. In addition, the degree of sampling error may be quite large for some state estimates.
The word is underemployed and for the author's purposes are still job-seekers who quality for government benefits. The practical difference between them and actual unemployed people isn't much when it comes to policy.
Then why are saying they're measuring "unemployment" when they're actually measuring underemployment? Words mean things and they're choosing the wrong words specifically in order to mislead.
Also, tracking poverty is more meaningful than tracking underemployment. There are millions of stay at home parents in this country who would qualify as underemployed, but who aren't in poverty because their spouse or possibly other family member supports them.
No you're not. It means you're removed from both the numerator and the denominator. By no means does it mean you count as employed; that would be silly.
I think you could certainly call these people "poor", but not unemployed. That word means something different.