Each month the press and those who follow the press go
through the data releases on employment.
The more you wish to listen, the more you get granularity – claims,
jobs, changes in the workforce, hours worked, earnings, part time vs full time,
and one unitary number (the unemployment rate) that may or may not make sense
at all. Arguments abound concerning the validity of all of it, but it is a
consistently gathered and reported set of statistics that are done with rigor.
The diligence of the exercise does not prevent it from wrongheadedness because its ceteris is not paribus.
The entire basis of labor statistics is a basis that remains
the same, and I am convinced that at the high middle and low end of all of
these data series there has been material structural change in this basis – in short,
lifestyle decisions determine employment decisions throughout the U.S economy.
First, I insensitively consider the family formation decision to be a lifestyle issue, so let us
just say the family unit of 2015 is quite different than in the past. Data has emerged that households without
married couples surpass those with a married couple. Beyond this
characteristic, the former extended family rarely exists, and thus the support
for child care which leads us to…
The decision to not work and allocate efforts towards family
is a choice, but it is exacerbated by the lack of extended family and the high
cost of commercial child care. Worsened
by the dispersion of mothers and mothers in law away from the grandchildren, it
often make sense to simply not work; now more than ever. But the decision to form a family is a
lifestyle decision, and even worse the proliferation of ‘accidental’ families
(again to be insensitive) is a lifestyle choice.(I won’t go in detail to avoid
outrage)
Compounding the change in the basis a third lifestyle issue
that I find remarkably absent from the expert articles. A brief review of the want ads shows hundreds
of good pay with benefit jobs all around the US that go begging. Not requiring advanced education these jobs
are unfilled because the applicant cannot pass a drug test. This is not limited
to the millennials, but there is a core of our population that has chosen a
lifestyle that includes drugs (including prescription meds) and/or alcohol that
eliminates them from full labor force participation. We do not see the ‘cannot
pass the follicle test’ category in the statistics but we know them well…they
are our friends family and neighbors. An $18 per hour CDL job with benefits is
the low end of available compensation that this broad cohort self-disqualifies.
Good arguments do not rely on anecdotes and include
data. I have none, but the strength of
the anecdotes is that they compound. The
nontraditional family also has accidental children to care for and has a
lifestyle that includes substances that prevent proper employment and
advancement. For the older cohorts, individuals and groups have chosen paths
that are compatible with these lifestyles and they do not affect the
employments statistics (but they do affect the government transfers as they
age). The younger cohorts may actually
have an acceleration effect where nontraditional household leverages the child
care lifestyle and accelerates the use of recreational substances.
But I am insensitive. This is a free society, and these
morons have the right to their lifestyle choices. Just don’t ask me to listen to the arguments for
more transfer payments to the long term unemployed. It is a lifestyle choice or
choices that got them there.
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