Oh I’m sorry I wasn’t reacting to you or your source at all but an earlier economist who first quoted the data and commented about incentivizing work for these people as if their unemployment was voluntary and not built into the economic system. I wish I had made that clear.
It’s interesting how no context is given for that number. Is it larger than in the past? If so by how much? Given a background population of mentally ill, disabled, sick or injured men how does this number measure up to past periods? There’s been a rise in injured and disabled men taking social security in their fifties and early sixties. Where does that number fit in? How has COVID affect this? Has there been an increase in disability? I heard it quoted before by a government official I don’t remember who. The implication being that these men are voluntarily sitting at home in a whim
Fwiw, I’m quoting Kristof’s use of the statistic. The link I shared above is from his column to the information from the St. Louis Fed, which includes a graph of the data over time. I don’t know the details on what goes into the statistic. The last thing I’ll add is that I didn’t take the same meaning from the data that you did. I took it not as a kind of moral indictment of people but rather as a high level indicator of something - unclear what, according to Kristof - being wrong, I.e. going badly, in society.
[About one-seventh of prime-age men (ages 25 to 54), historically the pillar of the American labor force, are not working today. We don’t fully understand why, but it’s not because jobs don’t exist — there are 1.7 job openings for each unemployed worker.]
Does this number included the incarcerated? Because we have historically record numbers of incarcerated people and most are men in this age group. How many are formerly incarcerated? They have difficulty finding jobs in any labor market. Our percentage of the population incarcerated is unprecedented world wide. Can you incarcerate a significant percentage of young men and not have it impact your labor force?
That’s a very good question. I don’t know the answer. Kristof links to this data in his column: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25MAUSA156S. Assuming incarcerated people are included in the denominator (and I would guess they are but don’t know for certain), that would explain at least some portion of the decline, as you rightly suggest.
Oh I’m sorry I wasn’t reacting to you or your source at all but an earlier economist who first quoted the data and commented about incentivizing work for these people as if their unemployment was voluntary and not built into the economic system. I wish I had made that clear.
It’s interesting how no context is given for that number. Is it larger than in the past? If so by how much? Given a background population of mentally ill, disabled, sick or injured men how does this number measure up to past periods? There’s been a rise in injured and disabled men taking social security in their fifties and early sixties. Where does that number fit in? How has COVID affect this? Has there been an increase in disability? I heard it quoted before by a government official I don’t remember who. The implication being that these men are voluntarily sitting at home in a whim
Not commenting on your use of the statistic. It is important.
Fwiw, I’m quoting Kristof’s use of the statistic. The link I shared above is from his column to the information from the St. Louis Fed, which includes a graph of the data over time. I don’t know the details on what goes into the statistic. The last thing I’ll add is that I didn’t take the same meaning from the data that you did. I took it not as a kind of moral indictment of people but rather as a high level indicator of something - unclear what, according to Kristof - being wrong, I.e. going badly, in society.
How many of these men are incarcerated?
[About one-seventh of prime-age men (ages 25 to 54), historically the pillar of the American labor force, are not working today. We don’t fully understand why, but it’s not because jobs don’t exist — there are 1.7 job openings for each unemployed worker.]
Does this number included the incarcerated? Because we have historically record numbers of incarcerated people and most are men in this age group. How many are formerly incarcerated? They have difficulty finding jobs in any labor market. Our percentage of the population incarcerated is unprecedented world wide. Can you incarcerate a significant percentage of young men and not have it impact your labor force?
That’s a very good question. I don’t know the answer. Kristof links to this data in his column: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25MAUSA156S. Assuming incarcerated people are included in the denominator (and I would guess they are but don’t know for certain), that would explain at least some portion of the decline, as you rightly suggest.