3/7/2026 at 2:05:31 PM
The ungameable statistic is the native born labor force participation rate, which also ticked down: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU01373413.Unfortunately, that figure never recovered from the pandemic. It also never recovered from a major drop after the 2008 recession.
by rayiner
3/7/2026 at 4:19:39 PM
>The ungameable statistic is the native born labor force participation rate, which also ticked down: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU01373413.It's pretty obvious the declining native born rate is just mirroring the overall decline in labor participation, probably from demographic changes. Old people retire and stop working, after all.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
If you look at prime age labor force participation rate, it tells a completely different story:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060
It's ironic that you talk of "ungameable statistics", implying that others are misleading people with the statistics, when you're seemingly trying to do the same thing by selectively presenting that statistic to imply that immigrants are stealing native-born's jobs.
by gruez
3/7/2026 at 5:22:55 PM
Looking at native born employment doesn’t “imply” anything. It just excludes confounding factors that come into play when looking at trends because immigration changes the composition of the people you’re looking at over time.by rayiner
3/8/2026 at 5:36:27 AM
What? How on earth does that make any sense at all? Do jobs record for recently immigrated vs immigrated n years ago? Is the job market or salary offers different for either group? Then how does it make sense to arbitrarily exclude one set of people and falsely claim it makes the stats more "accurate"?by donkeybeer
3/7/2026 at 3:11:51 PM
Hot take, but I don’t think it should recover. If anything, I think a combination of low unemployment, higher wages, and a labor force participation rate of ~45-55% would be a sweet spot to aim for:* It would indicate more single income households able to make ends meet and live higher quality lives
* It would suggest more stay-at-home parents to rear children, which is only possible in a safe and stable economic environment
* It’d also suggest a higher amount of community engagement, rather than mere working and resting.
* A rise in successful single-income households would also suggest improvements in cost of living affordability
In our current world, where we expect both parents to work full-time jobs to survive (because the cost of everything assumes a married couple employed full-time, especially in cities), this number is bad; in a healthier society, it might be a good thing.
I’d argue in favor of deflating costs or raising wages instead of increasing labor force participation, but that’s my personal soapbox.
by stego-tech
3/7/2026 at 8:23:11 PM
That's like someone hearing about a landmine problem with people getting their legs blown off, and saying "it's a good thing, as wings are better anyway, and they'll be able to just fly wherever they want" - when nobody is getting wings or mentioned anything about wings.Likewise, nobody said the higher unemployment is combined with higher wages (it's combined with worse jobs and inflation), or that it indicates "more single income households able to make ends meet and live higher quality lives" (rather, family households live hand to mounth, and single with no kids still have troubles financially).
And of course there's absolutely no indication or real possibility that this will be the case.
>I’d argue in favor of deflating costs or raising wages instead of increasing labor force participation, but that’s my personal soapbox.
Why not also give everybody a free pony while at it? So they can spend all that quality time they gain from not having a job in 2026.
by coldtea
3/7/2026 at 4:01:03 PM
I love this vision. What do you think might be required to make it real?by chrisweekly
3/7/2026 at 6:02:34 PM
For one thing, people to divest themselves of the notion "leaving money on the table" is a bad thing. It's part of the affordability crisis and why two income households are the default. It's already priced in as they say. Until that Ethic gets revised, and all the ethical arbitagers are found and eliminated with extreme prejudice, that vision cannot come to fruition. Because the price you pay will be adjusted to reflect your maximum actuarial capacity to earn. Fun bit is, you on the bottom don't get to make the decisions that effect that change. The people at the top/in the .001% do, because if everyone else made the change first without dealing with them, they're sitting on enough assets to buyout everyone else adopting the new paradigm. Then again, there's also the question of "just let em do it, then ignore their claim." Long as everyone else is in alignment, and we just ignore those people, a second system ought to be able to stabilize to which the .001% can either sync to, or remain ostracized. It does require full solidarity from the 99.99% though. That means literally treating the horded wealth and businesses of these people as no good. Destabilizing in the short term; probably gonna hurt like a sumabitch. A theoretical offramp to the vision, however, it is.by salawat
3/7/2026 at 6:33:35 PM
> For one thing, people to divest themselves of the notion "leaving money on the table" is a bad thing.Unfortunately people will never divest themselves of this notion.
The only reason people "left money on the table" prior to the recent-ish past was incomplete information and a slow feedback loop, but with modern tech they have all the information they need to squeeze out every last dollar.
Algorithmic large database systems (like RealPage for apartments) were already causing this problem pre-AI and now it is going to get supercharged.
The only thing that would stop it is government regulation, and... good luck with that, at least in the US. The government here is well and fully captured by the same people vacuuming up all the wealth.
by bayarearefugee
3/7/2026 at 4:29:02 PM
The return of the proceeds of labor to the people who performed the labor.Edit: my CEO owns ~125 houses.
by snypher
3/7/2026 at 4:48:32 PM
>The return of the proceeds of labor to the people who performed the labor.It's funny you bring that up, given the statistics on this shows that it's been trending down, but nowhere close to the amount you'd expect from the popular discourse.
by gruez
3/7/2026 at 5:30:02 PM
A lot, because no system or crisis has an "easy solution". That said, a few highlights I've chewed on:* From the social angle, we have got to address this notion of gender roles being a prerequisite for such a societal outcome. It's not a "women are homemakers and men are breadwinners" type bullshit, and it's not penalizing the homemaker by robbing them of personal growth. It's acknowledging that some of us - for whatever reason at all - may prefer contributing to the success of the home and community rather than the success of a business, and that's a perfectly valid path to follow in life with its own societal rewards and benefits that cannot be directly captured in terms of GDP or wealth. If a woman wants to have a high-growth career while the husband stays at home to raise the kids, we shouldn't be shaming or humiliating either participant for their decisions since both are valid not just to themselves, but to society as a whole.
* From a business perspective, we also need to figure out the right balance of regulations and reforms that prohibit (and meaningfully punish) discrimination based on these sorts of choices. Women shouldn't be penalized for having kids, men shouldn't be penalized for choosing to be a homemaker (full or part-time), and vice versa. It's acknowledging that gaps are normal because life is chaos, and rebuilding work around the flexibility to adapt to life rather than jamming everything into fixed blocks of time or location. COVID showed us this is possible, but the whiplash after shows that those in power refuse to change willingly; changes must come from external actors and forces because power refuses to acquiesce otherwise.
* From a government point of view, it's a lot of social safety nets and reforms. It's fixing healthcare, it's making childcare affordable, it's raising minimum wages; it's also raising taxes on multi-income households proportionate to earned income (higher taxes on higher incomes), expanding affordability programs into higher income tiers (such that unorthodox households aren't punished - this mainly targets immigrant and queer multi-family households), prioritizing "right-size" homeownership (taxing 2nd+ homes at higher rates, or large homes/land plots in dense urban areas at higher rates than multi-family or smaller-plot homes), expanding transit options to reduce costs of vehicle ownership and improve job opportunities, the list goes on for miles. The overarching goal is one of intentional vision rather than piecemeal band-aids: building the legal structures and safety nets needed to not merely "promote" this outcome, but all but mandate it via incentives and punishments. It's as much about reassuring people that their choice is valid and will result in a long and prosperous life as much as it is handcuffing Capital from squeezing blood from stones for shareholder value.
* EDIT: One thing Government could be doing to improve things now, that seems incredibly counter-intuitive on its face, is to stop means-testing benefits. We need to stop caring who is acceptable enough to get social benefits, and instead focus on ensuring benefits are used effectively regardless of who gets them - directly paying landlords instead of handing out vouchers, for instance, or curtailing SNAP/EBT uses away from ultra-processed foods, or just extending Medicare to everybody. Yes, there's a lot of questions around sustainability of these programs, but that's all the more reason to maximize their pool of users, cut out middlemen, and raise taxes to specifically cover costs of services instead of printing money to cover deficits. Patrick Boyle's latest video actually touches on this in the UK, where even high earners aren't motivated to do more work or earn more pay because losing means-tested benefits will cost them more than they would earn.
And that's just the high-level stuff. It's a lot to think about because it requires us to collectively fight for an intended future instead of just one-offing problems individually. That's a lot of work that not a lot of folks have ever had to do outside of minority spaces, and those muscles are going to need to be trained back into use over time. It's not impossible, but it is incredibly hard.
by stego-tech
3/7/2026 at 3:04:52 PM
> The ungameable statisticHow are the normal unemployment rates (U-3, U-6, etc.) "gamed" exactly? Or, put another way: what would you do differently?
by hypeatei
3/7/2026 at 3:23:27 PM
U-3 Unemployment doesn't include people not actively looking for work, people making less than they'd like, or working less than they'd like.https://www.lisep.org has alternate measures that try accounting for take home wages as well as seasonal variability (construction is noted as being volatile but relatively well paying).
by kitten_mittens_
3/7/2026 at 3:47:33 PM
The graph ("vs. Headline Rate")[0] follows the same trend lines as the BLS numbers just with a higher percentage. I don't see how the "poverty wage" methodology (which is arbitrary) is helpful here, it doesn't take into account caregivers or disabled people who may be keeping their wage low on purpose due to benefits cliffs.Effectively they just take the official numbers and add a constant.
by hypeatei
3/7/2026 at 4:32:08 PM
>U-3 Unemployment doesn't include people not actively looking for work, people making less than they'd like, or working less than they'd like.That seems fine? It's the unemployment rate, after all, not "likes how much money they're making" rate.
Moreover if you compare these alternate measures, they more or less match the same trend as U-3. For instance:
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/alternative-...
So if the alternate measures mostly follow the same trend as U-3, and the numbers are only higher because they use a looser criteria, what's the point of bringing them up, other than as a cheap rhetorical device?
Suppose we had some way of objectively determining happiness on a 1-10 scale. The government puts out a metric called the "sad rate", which is people who are 2 or less on the scale. What's the point in coming along and declaring "the real sad rate is not actually 5%. If we change the cutoff to 3, it's actually 10%!"? Heck, why stop at 3? Why not declare everyone under 5 sad? Then the sad rate would be even bigger, great for doomposting!
by gruez
3/7/2026 at 3:30:12 PM
Isn’t that a proxy for aging and lower birth rates?by api
3/7/2026 at 8:16:15 PM
>The ungameable statistic is the native born labor force participation rateWhy would it be "ungameable"?
by coldtea
3/9/2026 at 3:12:03 PM
Only thing I can think of is that if you pick a statistic with fewer confounding variables you have less of a chance to cherrypick?by foxyv
3/7/2026 at 2:32:53 PM
I’m naturalized—very, very long term—but I couldn’t find any stats that track by US citizens.I suppose that makes me a second-class citizen?
by nobodyandproud
3/7/2026 at 2:44:33 PM
You have one right fewer than natively born Americans - you can't become the President. Make of that what you will.by bojan
3/7/2026 at 3:04:28 PM
This is another one of the weird American-isms that many Americans don't realise isn't normal everywhere else.Boris Johnson was born in New York. "He wasn't born in this country" probably wasn't even on anybody's top-100 problems with Boris as Prime Minister.
by tialaramex
3/7/2026 at 3:13:25 PM
The US president is both Head of State and Head of Government. It turns out there's a bunch of countries that require the head of state to be a natural born citizen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidential_qualifica...by RaptorJ
3/7/2026 at 3:18:04 PM
I wouldn't call it an Americanism, per se. There are plenty of countries where you can't become a citizen at all without having a relative who is one. There are also plenty of countries where, even being born there is not sufficient for citizenship (in fact, only 35 countries in the world grant citizenship unconditionally via being born within the borders).by wavemode
3/7/2026 at 3:26:39 PM
The requirements to be US President isn't to be born in the US, but to be a "natural born citizen."While the rules of being a natural born citizen is more complicated if born outside of the US, you can generally become one if one of your parents is a US citizen.
by hx8
3/7/2026 at 4:03:08 PM
I don’t mind it. Learned about it in elementary. But not stat tracking citizenship employment seems like a blind spot?by nobodyandproud
3/7/2026 at 4:19:07 PM
[flagged]by admissionsguy
3/7/2026 at 5:02:09 PM
Every time I wonder why I don’t lean more Republican, gems like this jog me back.There’s a lot of reasons not to like Obama’s 8 years or why he wasn’t the best candidate. But for god’s sakes, this isn’t one of them.
by nobodyandproud
3/7/2026 at 2:41:20 PM
It means that if we cut off or discourage immigration, we can’t count on non-native citizens to continue boosting our numbers. So, we have to look at the native-born stats to get an idea of our future.by bicx
3/7/2026 at 4:44:38 PM
Yes, but why not have both? Why only native?I can’t help but think talks of denaturalization are more than just fringe.
Or perhaps the numbers are starkly different, and for the best?
by nobodyandproud
3/7/2026 at 2:42:22 PM
The future is a labor shortage. Good for wages, bad for inflation.by 46493168
3/7/2026 at 2:41:49 PM
[flagged]by 46493168
3/7/2026 at 2:14:32 PM
As the population continues to age, and more people are 62+, this is expected...by onlyrealcuzzo
3/7/2026 at 2:19:09 PM
I don’t think that’s telling the whole story.Immigration has always been used as leverage against the native workers, and now it’s more efficiently corrupt than ever.
by djohnston
3/7/2026 at 8:24:49 PM
It’s crazy how the same people that are pro-labor union are also pro-immigration. How do they not realize that immigration is used as a weapon against labor organization? Workers movements of the 20th century were well aware of this obvious fact. But I guess in this hyper polarized culture, people are scared of being labeled a bigot for having a stance on immigration that divergent from the liberal orthodoxyby GOD_Over_Djinn
3/8/2026 at 3:54:02 PM
Because they see the world thru skin color not economic class.by djohnston
3/7/2026 at 2:44:07 PM
Used by whom?by 46493168
3/7/2026 at 4:19:50 PM
The capital class?by influx
3/7/2026 at 2:18:49 PM
Look at that trajectory one more time and tell me how 'expected' it is.The first stages of a worldwide recession is what it looks like to me.
by idiotsecant
3/7/2026 at 5:12:57 PM
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1T9dv&heig...
There are way more retired people as a percentage.
by gilbetron
3/8/2026 at 12:47:20 PM
I need you to very carefully consider the x axis of those 2 plots. Think about it real hard.by idiotsecant
3/7/2026 at 2:18:41 PM
Is this working age population or all ages ?by rafaelmn
3/7/2026 at 2:43:08 PM
That seems to be everyone above 16 years of age. It excludes inmates, that is penal and mental institutions (which in the land of the free is surprisingly sizeable chunk). Also excludes active military personnel. Notably it includes people who are disabled but are unable to work.by Knufferlbert
3/7/2026 at 2:37:24 PM
It is a historical range of working age, so it includes people who are 16 and over and everyone until the die of old age.by throwawaysleep
3/7/2026 at 3:06:36 PM
[flagged]by kilroy123
3/7/2026 at 3:41:14 PM
The iphone + fb/instagram = kids spending more time on the screen than irlSince, youth suicide, depression, anxiety, etc have hit record levels. Coincides with the smart phone adoption and negative emotion graphs.
by game_the0ry
3/7/2026 at 3:43:18 PM
I love how Covid lockdowns clearly show up in so many graphs going across the past few decades. It's going to be a real gem for researchers in general going forward.by s_dev
3/8/2026 at 4:32:52 AM
90% of those charts have no notable change or inflection point around 2012.by BoiledCabbage
3/7/2026 at 5:24:18 PM
That is an impressive number of graphs and very cool! I wonder if the author would consider repeating with KDE plots instead of splines, so the pretty shape of the curves has some statistical meaning alsoby manwe150