“Labor force participation for unskilled men has dropped off the table the last few decades,” [Timothy Taylor, managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives] said. “Wages for that group aren’t high enough to encourage them to work. For a lot of those men, going on disability may be a better option. Working off the books may be going on. The benefits of working at $10 or $11 an hour just isn’t enticing 50-year-old men into the labor force,” he said.
Another factor in play: there were an estimated 2.3 million people in U.S. prisons at the end of 2010, the highest rate of incarceration in the world. That’s quadruple the number imprisoned in 1980. The rate of imprisonment has gone from 100 per 100,000 people in the mid-1970s to 500 per 100,000 today.
The US berates China for its human right abuse, and so it should. However, the imprisonment rate in China is ~ 119 per 100,000 (which is about the same as Australia) while the rate for the US is ~ 6.3 times greater at 756 per 100,000.
It is difficult not to concluded that the imprisonment of 2.3 million people in the US involves human rights abuses.
If comparison of the US with China is seen as “manifestly wrong”, then perhaps the comparison with Australia at 129 per 100,000 is more appropriate.
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” From the United States Declaration of Independence.
Statistics have been obtained from the Sentencing Advisory Council website http://www.sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/
Imprisonment of 2.3 million people and non-participation of unskilled men in the US work-force both highlight a serious social issue that needs to be addressed. Not by taking from the rich (that’s how many unskilled end up in prison) but by encouraging the rich to create more job opportunities through pursuing their own self-interest.
Australian experiences show an almost pathological hatred of men over 50 by younger managment groups. They see this group as not being ‘tech savvy’ enough to belong to any workforce except window cleaning. Such ignorance and discrimination will rebound upon them before they reach the same age and they will not have learned the necessary lessons from having an older mentor with life experience rather than just search engine experience.
Inso far as China is concerned we must always be aware that the Red Army has already murdered more than 60 million Chinese and Tibetan people, surpassing Josef Stalin’s record of 40 million. Lets keep human rights in perspective.
So the measure of unemployment is not necessarily that helpful a guide to the health of the ecomomy or the structural economics of a system.
A better measure is participation and the productivity of the participants.
Correct. Rate of change in employment is more accurate than tracking unemployment where the figures are distorted by participation rates.