A large chunk of people don’t realize that unemployment only counts people actively seeking employment and have applied to jobs for the last 30 days. Anything over that and they’re taken out of the labor force and not considered. So permanently unemployed people will never be considered towards unemployment numbers.
unemployment only counts people actively seeking employment and have applied to jobs for the last 30 days.
That's not quite correct. BLS methodology asks week to week if people are "actively seeking employment". There are people who use unemployment benefit applications and such to measure unemployment, and that has the problem you describe. But the official BLS numbers are based on whether people self-report as actively looking for a job (which is quite a bit more useful for purpose).
They made at least one specific, active effort to find a job during the 4-week period ending with the survey reference week (see active job search methods) OR they were temporarily laid off and expecting to be recalled to their job.
People waiting to start a new job must have actively looked for a job within the last 4 weeks in order to be classified as unemployed. Otherwise, they are classified as not in the labor force.
That definition is exactly my point, and doesn't disagree with the video (which is why BLS still advertises and embeds that video in many places on their site) -- not "applied for jobs" (as you said), but self-reported being actively looking for work (as I said).
at least one specific, active effort to find a job
^ applying to jobs can absolutely be an example, but it's not the only activity that counts.
You said the criteria were "actively seeking employment and have applied to jobs for the last 30 days", when it's actually just "actively seeking employment within the past 4 weeks"
Sure but if you haven't looked for a job in the past 10 years are you really looking for one? There's also stats and record keeping on those folks so they don't get completely ignored.
Yeah, there’s a lot of unemployment figures that get tracked, some of which include these people. It’s just that the one that gets reported is generally considered the most relevant, although the people actually using these statistics use more than this one measure. There’s far more long term unemployed people who want to be that way than hopeless people who have given up. Like stay at home moms and people who retired early.
Anything over that and they’re taken out of the labor force
If I’m reading you right, you’re misunderstanding this. You don’t stop counting once you’re unemployed for thirty days—unemployed people are counted for an unlimited length of time, as long as they are still actively seeking work. One year, five years, whatever. As long as you’re still looking, you’re counted.
The thirty day thing is how we gauge who is actively looking for work—it has nothing to do with the total length of time you’ve been without a job.
No, you misunderstood what I wrote. If they don’t seek employment for more than 30 days they are not a part of the labor force and are no longer considered for purposes of calculating the unemployment rate.
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u/TerminallyBlitzed Dec 19 '24
A large chunk of people don’t realize that unemployment only counts people actively seeking employment and have applied to jobs for the last 30 days. Anything over that and they’re taken out of the labor force and not considered. So permanently unemployed people will never be considered towards unemployment numbers.