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Nearly 3 in 5 incorrectly believe US is in economic recession (fox59.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

42 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Fascinating little window

Almost 60% of respondents wrongly believe that the country is in a recession (it hasn’t been since 2020)
55% believe the economy is shrinking (it is growing)
49% say unemployment is at a 50-year high (it’s close to a 50-year low)
58% said the reason the economy is worsening is due to Biden’s mismanagement

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Question, why are we linking fox 59, when the hill has the same article word for word?

Second, why are we being told we are wrong? By what metric are we incorrectly measuring?

Forty-nine percent of respondents say unemployment is at a 50-year high, though it’s actually close to a 50-year low at less than 4 percent.

Please stop pretending that just because people are employed that they are not working harder then ever before to stay afloat. It is disingenuous at best.

The NBER said the most recent recession coincided with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the U.S. hasn’t been in one since.

Getting out of a recession does not mean people did not have to make hard choices with their finances during that time.

Just because we are pulling out of the Covid craze, does not mean that the average household has rebounded.

People had to uproot their lives and won't feel the effect of good policy until well down the line.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

Dude fuck the hill
IDK why inflation-adjusted wages at the main quartiles isn't the main metric and the first significant metric everyone looks at. If I had to pick one set of numbers for "the economy," that would be it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Worth adding that “unemployment” in this context just means people who are claiming unemployment benefits, a things that runs out, and when they run out, they no longer are counted by it.

Also difficult to claim unemployment if you lose a gig economy job. So many people who lost their “job” doing something like uber eats are not represented.

A better metric is workforce participation rate which is at an all time low. There are a lot of factors to that, including a higher rate of retirement, but that alone does not account for the record low number.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

A better metric is workforce participation rate which is at an all time low

This is the opposite of true - it's not at a historic high, either, but it's climbing. And, it's notable that it blipped back up to as if Covid hadn't happened, which most countries haven't been able to do. (Also worth noting that all this is taking place within a tiny range of 4% on the full size graph; even the "big" Covid dip was only a drop of 3%.)

Unemployment as it's defined on the charts is actually sort of a bad metric, yes. For whatever reason the story picked a bunch of not really all that good metrics (economic expansion, stock market) and then asked people about them. I do think it would have been a much better story if they'd asked about wages instead of these corporate-friendly metrics.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Worth adding that “unemployment” in this context just means people who are claiming unemployment benefits, a things that runs out, and when they run out, they no longer are counted by it.

✋ This is where I've been for the past year and a half.