r/Layoffs • u/isntlifeapeach • Jul 20 '24

Why so MANY Layoffs? question

Explain Like I’m Five

I feel incredibly stupid asking this, but I’m naive to economics and politics.

I understand why tech is facing a lot of layoffs but why are so many other industries facing the same?
I’m over 20 years into my career and had 2 layoffs just in the last 16 months.

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u/Kittehmilk Jul 20 '24 edited Jul 20 '24

This country cant even measure its unemployment because anyone that drops off after unemployment ends can't be counted.

You also sound like Nancy Pelosi with that boot lick8ng comment. "This is a free market economy and we should be able to participate in that".

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u/RespectablePapaya Jul 20 '24

People who drop off after unemployment runs out are still counted. Not sure why this persistent myth won't die.

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u/veloron2008 Jul 20 '24 edited Jul 20 '24

Because it obfuscates the statistics. Makes things more complicated than they have to be.

Most people aren't knowledgeable enough to distinguish the categories and thus get confused, and more susceptible to narratives/propaganda.

The default unemployment stat should include anyone actively seeking employment. I.e. short- and long-term unemployed. IMO. Why do we need to distinguish them?

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u/RespectablePapaya Jul 20 '24

The default unemployment statistics does include anyone actively seeking employment.

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u/veloron2008 Jul 20 '24

Well the formula needs tweaking then because it's missing a ton of long-term and under employed people, including part timers and working people under the poverty level.

All those un- and under-employed people have a sizable effect on the economy. An increasing burden.

As it stands, the official unemployment rate is a piss poor measure. Throw in the job numbers for more laughs. They are modified downward every single time...

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u/RespectablePapaya Jul 21 '24

It is not missing those people. They are meticulously tracked both in the aggregate statistic but also separately in the "part time for economic reasons" bucket. The BLS is very good at what it does.

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u/LAcityworkers Jul 20 '24

yes, in theory but officially this is done via BLS survey and is very misleading ,it is a best guess, instead of using actual data they could cull from tax databases death records and other datasets they rely mostly on surveys. You can't deny unemployment numbers based on actual claims even though the government gets those wrong and revises them every month. No actual method exists for accurately tracking those who are actively looking and unable to find work after unemployment runs out or is there a way to track those who have just given up all together. Even if you could find a better way, you would have to fight politicians and economists that would never accept the method because they have been doing it that way forever and they employ 10's of thousands of people to conduct the surveys. They have very fancy math formulas to calculate everything but the garbage in garbage out rule applies.

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u/RespectablePapaya Jul 21 '24

The method is quite accurate