General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: A segment of DU is very invested in painting a dystopian picture of the US [View all]daredtowork
(3,732 posts)The Federal government has an enormous incentive to make stats look good - after all the economy is one big confidence game. No one wants to send out signals that will cause employers to batten down hatches.
As a disabled person, I have been put through the wringer of many poverty bureaucracies including self-serving employment programs that get funding for getting people employed but who mainly"coach" and blame and take credit of a client happens to get employed through their own devices. One of the problems with these programs is that they are tremendously incentivized to drive clients into unstable temp and seasonal work. The vast majority of jobs on offer are contract jobs. And poor people are forced to take them because of the lack of cash welfare for reason of poverty only. Once poor people are on that treadmill of temp work, gig jobs, on call shifts - it's exhaustingand makes them crazy - yet they don't have a chance to get something better while employed. Then every few months or weeks even they are unemployed again - then they are too busy being pushed into more gig work, dealing with poverty bureaucracies, and engaging in survival trades, to reach any kind of escape velocity. Labor stats keep measuring they are employed every few weeks. The State is happy with its lying statistics, but it is eating those people on the bottom alive.
Other tactics have been used to relieve the unemployment statistics. People make choices when faced with homelessness or suicide as the other options. "Going back to school" is the traditional one. "Travel" or "joining a monastery" less traditional. People are pressured to get married, and the non-working spouse is hidden. All of this is FORCED by the lack of safety net. Utopia is a lie.
On the bright side there were more programs to get veterans on disability and the chronically homeless and mentally ill on SSI. This is why the GOP is up in arms about "stealth welfare". They falsely think SSI mainly goes to black people since it's a way to get cash support if you aren't working. SSI roles are expanding: those that the Labor Dept needs to count as unemployed are shrinking.
I call bullshit on the Labor Department's unemployment stats. You might want to ask about what's being used as our "standard basket of goods" while you're at it. Govt. statistical honesty went out of style a long time ago.