“Data from the Kauffman Foundation indicate that the percent of new entrepreneurs who created a business by choice instead of necessity dropped from 86.86 percent in 2019 to 69.75 percent last year. Many people happy to work for somebody else were pushed into starting a business by pandemic-era chaos.
But a lot of those people seem to have discovered that they actually like working for themselves, and that may be causing a cultural shift. At the end of November, The Wall Street Journal reported that at least part of the “Great Resignation” phenomenon of Americans quitting jobs involved people starting businesses.”
“Employers in almost every industry say they’re struggling to find workers, but the situation is especially severe in the leisure and hospitality sector. While workers in these industries are getting paid more than ever, it still doesn’t seem like enough. Bars, restaurants, and hotels across the country are posting signs advertising open jobs — or asking customers to be patient since they don’t have enough staff. In August, the latest available month for openings and turnover data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were a near-record 1.7 million open jobs in leisure and hospitality — 10 percent of all jobs in the sector — and a record of nearly a million people quitting.”
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“when individual states rescinded their unemployment benefits this summer, it didn’t have a meaningful impact on the worker shortage in many industries, including leisure and hospitality. Data from September, when the benefits were cut on a federal level, show a similar story, suggesting there are reasons beyond financial keeping people from taking these jobs.”
“More people are turning to gig work than ever before, but since these jobs usually don’t come with employer benefits, their proliferation could worsen inequality for millions of Americans.
The number of people employed in nontraditional ways in the US rose to a record 51 million this year, an unprecedented 34 percent jump compared to 2020, according to new data from MBO Partners, a company that provides business solutions to the independent workforce and has conducted a long-running study of the group. These types of workers — which include contract workers, people who are self-employed, temporary and on-call workers, and those who get short-term jobs through online apps or marketplaces — are now equivalent to a third of US employment.”
“The economy added 266,000 jobs in April according to today’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), while the unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 6.1 percent, from 6 percent.
These numbers are well below forecasts from economists who predicted that April would see the addition of around 1 million jobs, and the unemployment rate falling to 5.8 percent. The BLS report notes that we’re still far away from a pre-pandemic labor market, when the jobless rate sat at 3.5 percent.
Despite persistent levels of high joblessness, other metrics show signs of a labor market that’s increasingly tight.”
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“job openings and the number of workers quitting their jobs were at record highs and that wages were growing at 2019 levels (when the country’s economy was booming).
Employers, meanwhile, find themselves in increasingly dire straits trying to find new workers.”
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“what’s causing this weird mismatch between labor supply and demand?
Furman and Powell cite three possible explanations: continual health concerns about contracting COVID-19 at work encouraging some people to stay home, school closures keeping parents out of the workforce, and generous unemployment benefits.
The $300 weekly unemployment supplement provided as part of the March-passed American Rescue Plan pays some 42 percent of workers more than what they made at their old jobs, according to a University of Chicago analysis.
That $300 supplement will continue until September 2021. Today’s jobs report has business interests calling for ending it now.”
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“The consensus among economists is that high unemployment benefits were not producing high unemployment rates earlier in the pandemic, when there were so few jobs available, health concerns were more acute, and there was greater uncertainty about when the economy would improve.
Workers who found themselves in that precarious situation would jump at any employment opportunity they could find, even if it paid less than unemployment benefits, the thinking went.
The situation today is much different.
Vaccinations and falling cases and deaths should ameliorate many of the health concerns people have about returning to work. A wealth of job opportunities also means people receiving unemployment benefits now won’t automatically take whatever work they can find. Instead, they can afford to hold out for higher wages or a job that’s a better fit for them.”
“robust as the response was, the crisis exposed the fragility of the UI system. Technically, America’s process for handling unemployment claims was built on antiquated computer systems (some written in COBOL, a language largely abandoned in the 1980s), and millions of workers endured weeks of delays in getting their benefits.
So a major priority for Congress in 2021 has to be reforming the UI system: improving its functionality and making it more generous.”
“discouraged workers aren’t the only problem with the unemployment rate. In fact, these days the headline unemployment rate isn’t just an undercount, it actually paints an alternate reality that masks the degree to which low- and moderate-income people are hurting. As a result, policymakers believe these Americans are better off than they actually are.
There are two additional problems with the way we count people who are unemployed.
First, there’s no accounting for how many hours a part-time worker is working. By the BLS’ traditional definition, a handyman or private nurse who works for a single afternoon each week is counted in the headline national unemployment figure as “employed,” even if they want more work but can’t find it. Our unemployment figures make it look like the person working a handful of hours because that’s the only work they can get is just as “employed” as a full-time CEO. In practice, this means that the unemployment rate actively obscures how many workers are living in poverty in part not because they don’t have a job, but because they can’t get enough hours.
Second, the data doesn’t indicate whether the job a worker is doing pays enough to keep them out of poverty. The assumption implicit in the data is that if you’re “employed,” all should be well, but as the growing movement toward raising the minimum wage attests, it’s increasingly clear that many American workers are employed, often full-time, but still living in poverty.”
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“even when the economy was purportedly at its peak before the pandemic, approximately a quarter of Americans looking for full-time work at a livable wage couldn’t find it. And then at the nation’s worst moment in nearly a century, that number jumped, showing that 32.4 percent of the workforce was out of luck.”
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“The bottom line for too many Americans and for minorities in particular, is that for a long, long time, the American economy has not been performing as well as the headline unemployment rate suggests. And while that may be news to those living in comfortable neighborhoods and suburbs, it will not surprise those living in more downtrodden corners of many cities, let alone those who are living in places like the largely forgotten city where I grew up, York, Pa. Over the last several decades, as businesses including York Dental or York Air Conditioner have either closed facilities or scaled back, middle-class prosperity has become more of an impossible dream than an American Dream.
Washington, D.C., has failed to respond appropriately because the headline unemployment figures, particularly in good times, have given some policymakers of both parties license to embrace a narrative that in the absence of a crisis like the one we’re enduring today, our economic approach works fairly well.
We need an economic agenda born from the realization that the true unemployment picture is much worse than policymakers realize. A quarter of the workforce, including a disproportionate share of minority communities, can’t land a full-time job with a living wage even when the overall economy appears to be healthy. The window through which we view the economy matters. We’ve been using a broken measuring stick to keep track of our success.”
“At least $63 billion—an amount larger than the current annual budgets of 42 states—of the boosted unemployment payments distributed as part of the federal government’s pandemic response has been distributed improperly, according to an estimate from the Department of Labor Office of the Inspector General. The office attributes a “significant portion” of those improper payments to fraud, and preliminary audits indicate that the actual amount of improper payments may be higher.”
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“The inspector general reports “a forty-fold increase” in the number of fraud-related matters, which have “exploded” since the CARES Act passed.”
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“payments to people who can’t work because of the pandemic (or due to the government’s response to it) is a defensible proposal. But even defensible proposals have costs to consider. Extending the federally boosted unemployment payments through August will cost taxpayers an estimated $246 billion—and that likely means that another $24 billion, or more, will be lost to fraud.”
“Over the years, the rate of unemployment has become not just a gauge of the health of the labor market but the most common yardstick policymakers use to assess the health of the economy as a whole.
By this measure, despite the pandemic, things don’t look so bad right now. The headline unemployment rate for December stood at 6.7 percent. In recent years, there’s been some public recognition that that the headline rate is something of an undercount, since it only includes people actively looking for work; so-called discouraged workers who are unsure of how to go about a job search or who are too discouraged to try any more don’t show up in that top-line number. And, for decades now, the BLS has diligently supplemented the headline unemployment rate with additional information about these workers.
But it turns out that discouraged workers aren’t the only problem with the unemployment rate. In fact, these days the headline unemployment rate isn’t just an undercount, it actually paints an alternate reality that masks the degree to which low- and moderate-income people are hurting. As a result, policymakers believe these Americans are better off than they actually are.
There are two additional problems with the way we count people who are unemployed.
First, there’s no accounting for how many hours a part-time worker is working.”
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“Our unemployment figures make it look like the person working a handful of hours because that’s the only work they can get is just as “employed” as a full-time CEO. In practice, this means that the unemployment rate actively obscures how many workers are living in poverty in part not because they don’t have a job, but because they can’t get enough hours.
Second, the data doesn’t indicate whether the job a worker is doing pays enough to keep them out of poverty.”
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“Anyone who wants full-time work but can only find part-time work, and those working full-time but earning too little to climb above the poverty line, should be considered functionally unemployed. I’ve begun to calculate this, which I’ve dubbed the True Rate of Unemployment. And the TRU in December wasn’t 6.7 percent — it was an alarming 25.1 percent.”
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“In February 2020, when the economy was supposedly “hot,” the official BLS release suggested that a mere 3.5 percent of Americans were unemployed, but the “TRU” number was 24 percent.”