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posted by Fnord666 on Monday March 20 2017, @10:09AM   Printer-friendly
from the rent-is-due dept.

As video games get better and job prospects worse, more young men are dropping out of the job market to spend their time in an alternate reality. Ryan Avent suspects this is the beginning of something big

[...] Over the last 15 years there has been a steady and disconcerting leak of young people away from the labour force in America. Between 2000 and 2015, the employment rate for men in their 20s without a college education dropped ten percentage points, from 82% to 72%. In 2015, remarkably, 22% of men in this group – a cohort of people in the most consequential years of their working lives – reported to surveyors that they had not worked at all in the prior 12 months. That was in 2015: when the unemployment rate nationwide fell to 5%, and the American economy added 2.7m new jobs. Back in 2000, less than 10% of such men were in similar circumstances.

What these individuals are not doing is clear enough, says Erik Hurst, an economist at the University of Chicago, who has been studying the phenomenon. They are not leaving home; in 2015 more than 50% lived with a parent or close relative. Neither are they getting married. What they are doing, Hurst reckons, is playing video games. As the hours young men spent in work dropped in the 2000s, hours spent in leisure activities rose nearly one-for-one. Of the rise in leisure time, 75% was accounted for by video games. It looks as though some small but meaningful share of the young-adult population is delaying employment or cutting back hours in order to spend more time with their video game of choice.

TFA is worth reading in full. Much more deliberative than usual.

Previously on SoylentNews: Why Ever Stop Playing Video Games?


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 20 2017, @10:52AM (16 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 20 2017, @10:52AM (#481435) Journal

    Never believe the unemployment rates released by the government. Each of the past 3 administrations have manipulated the methods by which those numbers are arrived at. I know that much for sure, and I suspect that preceding administrations have done the same.

    There is some magic associated with 10% unemployment. No administration wants to be guilty of allowing unemployment to go over 10%. There is similar magic associated with that 5% number - all administrations want to announce that they are responsible for keeping and/or getting unemployment under 5%. And, it's all lies. Each administration has massaged not only the numbers, but the methods used to get the numbers.

    The ONLY honest way to figure unemployment is to divide the number of adults who are actually employed, by the number of healthy, working age adults. Note that you won't get an "unemployment rate" but an "employment rate".

    You don't discount any group - you have to count prisoners, military, people who have quit looking for work, adult college students, everyone between 18 and 63 years of age. People permanently removed from the work force due to disability, old age, retirement, senility/dementia need not be counted.

    In actuality, our unemployment rate has remained over 20% since 2009.

    While there is no "perfect" and maybe not even a "really good" place to get actual unemployment numbers, shadowstats is pretty good. http://www.shadowstats.com/ [shadowstats.com] http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts [shadowstats.com]

    Remember, I don't hold shadowstats out as perfect - I do contend that they are more honest, and more accurate than any numbers that the government wants to pass around. Every number released by the government has been manipulated and massaged to show that the current administration is doing well, and to convince you that government is doing it's job.

    If you don't believe the numbers, try looking around you. Don't even count "under-employed". Just count all the working-age people you know, and compare that to the number of people who are unemployed. Some of you will know almost no one who is unemployed. Others of you are surrounded by unemployed people. If we were to all count, then average our counts together, our numbers would be a lot closer to Shadowstats, than to the government figures.

    With one in five working-age adults not working, no wonder there are millions of people playing video games.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @11:15AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @11:15AM (#481441)

    Here in the Netherlands people are also not counted as unemployed if they don't actively apply for jobs, aren't eligible for social security... or they are forcefully "self employed" (fire your work force and hire them back as "independent entrepreneur" for less, competing against each other for the job), but don't make enough for a living.

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 20 2017, @12:09PM (6 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 20 2017, @12:09PM (#481454) Journal

    You don't discount any group - you have to count prisoners, military, people who have quit looking for work, adult college students, everyone between 18 and 63 years of age. People permanently removed from the work force due to disability, old age, retirement, senility/dementia need not be counted.

    I think you are trying to define a term that already exists: it's called participation rate [investopedia.com].
    Do you have in mind something else?

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 20 2017, @12:36PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 20 2017, @12:36PM (#481463) Journal

      That is what I have in mind - but the point is, the currently used figure is meaningless. As pointed out, each administration changes the methodology, counting fewer and fewer people in the workforce.

      Welfare recipients, for example, many of them healthy, working age adults, are not counted. They are invisible to the labor department.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 20 2017, @12:50PM (4 children)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 20 2017, @12:50PM (#481469)

      disability

      You do know that states push long term unemployed off state unemployment and onto federal disability as a policy decision, right? That's why in a supposedly post industrial economy with OSHA and the EPA, disability claims are exploding in number. Most folks on disability are just on long term welfare. Its actually getting to the point where most people on "disability" are actually OK, just unemployed.

      retirement

      Meaningless in a post-pension post-career world.

      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 20 2017, @03:02PM (2 children)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 20 2017, @03:02PM (#481522) Journal

        I'm not sure what you're saying here. People who are disabled, either short term, or long term, are not eligible for unemployment benefits. There are a number of other benefits which any individual may or may not be eligible for, but he is most certainly not eligible for unemployment benefits. Not in any state that I have ever worked in, at least.

        So, if a person does not apply for unemployment because he knows that he is ineligible, he is never counted to start with. If he does apply, only to learn that he is not eligible, he still isn't counted. In order to get his first unemployment check, the disabled person would have to commit perjury multiple times. That bit about "Check here if you are willing and able to work" will trip him up.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 20 2017, @05:09PM (1 child)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 20 2017, @05:09PM (#481592) Journal
          I guess the idea is that disability benefits are the long term unemployment benefits.
          • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 20 2017, @05:35PM

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 20 2017, @05:35PM (#481614)

            A classic example of what they actually are vs what they're supposed to be.

            With a side dish of the disabling lower back pain involves taking your now free medicare to the "pain care specialist clinic" for your weekly giant bottle of oxy which you don't need because you're unemployed not disabled, but when sold for cash comes in quite handy for paying the bills, SSDI not paying all that much compared to a real job.

            That's just how real america is now a days. Not how it should be, but how it is.

      • (Score: 1) by Rich26189 on Tuesday March 21 2017, @02:21PM

        by Rich26189 (1377) on Tuesday March 21 2017, @02:21PM (#482144)

        I remember a "60 Minutes" piece where their reporter went to a rural county in Alabama in which 25%-30% of the people were on disability. The reporter interviewed one of the doctors that had 'certified' these people were disabled. His reasoning was that they were unemployed, the farm jobs were too few to support the population, the manufacturing job had all dried up and they were too poor to move. There was no other 'social' safety net at the county or state level. Being on disability was the only way they would survive. The population was about equal black and white.

  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 20 2017, @12:39PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 20 2017, @12:39PM (#481467)

    I agree with the logic behind shadowstats but over the years he's gone weak and just keeps pushing the official stats plus 4 points. Seriously dude? 4.00000 points into eternity unchanging? For the last decade?

    For hard real data I like data.bls.gov and =fred.stlouisfed.org. Ignore the political percentages and look at "Labor force status: Employment-population ratio Type of data: Percent or rate Age: 16 years and over" and stuff like that. It ends up being the same verbal argument as shadowstats just more believable.

    The USA seems to generate about 3 million jobs per year in between recessions. Now if you import 1 million illegal aliens per year that is good economic times for all 300+ million of us. If you import 5 million illegal aliens per year that is not so good economic times for all 300+ million of us.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @01:43PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @01:43PM (#481485)

    "The ONLY honest way to figure unemployment is to divide the number of adults who are actually employed, by the number of healthy, working age adults. Note that you won't get an "unemployment rate" but an "employment rate"."

    I disagree, that leaves too many loopholes for adjustment.

    How about : the number of above minimum wage paying job hours worked divided by the 8 possible hours times the number of adults still breathing in the age group.

    Or the total wage paid divide by the number of breathing adults reported in an age and wage grid of bins.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 20 2017, @03:17PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 20 2017, @03:17PM (#481528) Journal

      Complicated, with no real gain. For purposes of determining how many people are employed, we don't care how much they make, or how many hours they work, or much of anything else. Those things help to determine economic health, and worker's relative wealth, but those things are pretty much irrelevant to the employment rate.

      If 89.5% of all working age Americans have a paying job, some of what you want to measure will improve, independent of actually measuring them. It's part of that "supply and demand" thing. When 80% or less of working age Americans have a job, then those things you want measured are going to grow worse. The labor market becomes a "buyer's market". We need jobs, we need people working. The more people who are working, the harder it will be to find people willing to work for minimum wage, and prices will increase. Maybe not for fast food restaurant workers, but in general, labor prices will go up.

      If and when the economy ever becomes a "seller's market", it will be time to remember those traditional minimum wage jobs, as well as exempted workers. Food service, farm labor, and associated workers should never have been exempted from the minimum wage. But, in today's market, you're simply not going to get any traction for a $15 McDonald's wage.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @05:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @05:27PM (#481605)

    Let me say that shadowstats is BAD. Like, REALLY BAD. EconoMonitor posted a pretty damning deconstruction of their numbers (no one ever re-enters the workforce after being unemployed? Really?).

    Similarly, I want the unemployment numbers to be about the _workforce_. Some people are not in the workforce. Examples include "student, currently in college", "(actually) disabled", "failing at having a business", and "person not looking for work". As an example, Dave Chappelle made about $50M (only $25M after taxes!) and then stopped working and looking for work. He is not in the "workforce", despite being able-bodied. I don't believe that 100% employment is good/bad, or 5% unemployment to be good/bad. I want it to be a measure of "how many people, if they choose to work, are able to?"

    With that said, ~10-20% of the people 35 that I know are not in the workforce. Fundamentally, the "unemployment number" is fairly significantly decoupled from my observations. My city indicates that it has 4.2% unemployment, which is decoupled from reality.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @05:58PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @05:58PM (#481635)

    During much of our country's history, that calculation would put employment under 50% due to women.

    Today it would put employment over 100% due to part-time jobs.

    Two better ways: What portion of families have a person who works full-time? What portion of families are self-supporting?

    We can sort of combine those for a better measure of health: What portion of families are self-supporting on a single job? What portion of males fully support more than just themselves on a single job?

  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday March 20 2017, @06:03PM (2 children)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Monday March 20 2017, @06:03PM (#481643) Journal

    The White House (and Runaway) Takes Its Attacks On Jobs Data To A New (And Dangerous) Level [fivethirtyeight.com]

    President Trump’s budget director on Sunday accused the Obama administration of “manipulating” economic data to make the unemployment rate look lower than it really was. That claim isn’t supported by evidence and will likely contribute to fears about the Trump administration’s commitment to honest reporting of government data.

    If your talking points are coming from the Liar-In-Chief, expect them to be served with a grain of salt.

    Hint: The rate that includes retirees and elementary school children is not the more accurate rate. Shadowstats claims 23% unemployment, does that actually pass the smell-test for anyone here??

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 20 2017, @06:56PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 20 2017, @06:56PM (#481680) Journal
      It would be simple for Trump to extend this alleged more accurate measure of unemployment into the past and public revised figures for say, the Bush and Obama administrations to get a baseline for comparison. Then we could decide the merits of his claims on a basis other than his word.
    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:44AM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:44AM (#481911) Journal

      https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t02.htm [bls.gov]

      The participation rate, mentioned earlier, is included in this graph. It's broken down by age, gender, and race.

      White men, 20 years and older, have a participation rate of just over 70%. That is the government's own number, not something made up by me, Shadowstats, or Trump. Women 20 years and older participation rate about 57%.

      Looking at blacks, participation rate is about 61%. Almost 40% of black people are not employed - that is, unemployed.

      You figure it out - white people with their "white privilege" are almost 30% not employed. Black people are almost 40% not employed.

      Sure, there are some independently wealthy individuals who simply don't need to work - like retired basketball players. Some others are in business for themselves. Entrepeneurs aren't counted in labor statistics, unless they employ other people.

      But, you figure it out. If four out of ten people in a given group are unable to find gainful employment, there is something wrong. Whites, being somewhat better off, are still hurting - 3 out of ten white males are unable to find gainful employment.

      Now, do you still believe government's lies? The unemployment rate has been over 20% for more than a decade. 5% is an outright lie. Massage the numbers long enough, parse words into meaningless drivel, and you can pass off any numbers you want to pass off. THAT is what has happened to our employment statistics.