When do good job numbers, become too good to be true?

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10. yeah, you kinda have to be a bit of an economist to really understand the numbers.

you're right, "the" unemployment rate only looks at people who have (at least) one job as a percentage of people in the job market. it ignores people who "retired" earlier than they would have liked, or who became students to escape a frustrating job market, or who are getting paid much less than previous jobs, or who are working three lousy jobs because they can't find one good one, etc.

and it ignores regional and industry variation and so on.

you really have to dig into all the employment numbers to get a better sense of what's going on.


as always in the economy of late, much of the gains are really going only to relatively few. the big story of the economy of late is the concentrated distribution of wealth and income.

so people have jobs, but not great ones, and those who have jobs already are still not often in a great position to get the raises that one might expect when there's a super low unemployment rate.