Ask HN: If 160M Americans are employed, what's the unemployment rate?
340 million total Americans.
160 million were employees last year.
So, raw figures alone, doesn't that mean over 50% of Americans are unemployed? > So, raw figures alone, doesn't that mean over 50% of Americans are unemployed? No, because “total population” is not the same as “total employable population”. There are children and retired people. Also it’s not clear how “employees” are counted, do self-employed and small business owners count? There could even be more people who don’t count for employment statistics, like those with severe disabilities. My definition of "raw" is literally employed vs not employed. That's as raw as it gets. Minimum employment age varies. Even if you don't count all 50M who are under 16 it would still be like 35% or higher unemployment. Even out of adults, lots and lots of people don't look for jobs and happy not working. People have no moral obligation to work their asses off. I don't know how about Americans but i look at the people i know, they are 25-50 years old, and few are employed in a traditional sense. Only 7.3M people are unemployed, in addition there are 1.7M who are not unemployed in traditional sense, but would like to work in theory, just kinda gave up trying (marginally attached), and another 500K who completely gave up a long time ago, but would like a job if they could get one - just no longer believe they could. The rest just don't need a job and don't want one and these people are to be celebrated rather than being treated as a "problem" to solve. That isn't what raw figures means though but yeah I agree mostly 4.3% in May. [1] [1] - https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate According to a black box "bureau". I provided figures. Even if you say some % is not employable - what %? Let's talk facts Not employable would suggest to me not part of the work force employed or unemployed. Agree with you - what % is not employable? About 75M people. So it's still over 30% unemployment not a laughably absurd ~4% 266 Million Americans are adults. 74 million are not yet adults. Some percentage of the adults are retired myself included, some are medically disabled, some are homeless. About 25% of adults (or 33% of all people) are on one or more welfare programs. Some people are career criminals and only the IRS count that employment and revenue. In terms of people capable of work, that are willing and able to work and want to work that number is indeed 4.3%. That is how unemployment is calculated, not the number of adults that are not currently in a job. Anything outside of that 4.3% are not employable either due to circumstances beyond their control or by choice and that is a much bigger topic that I will defer to someone else to comment on. Calculating a percentage that is not employable would be rather challenging I think. Whatever that number is I would expect it to climb as more jobs/careers are automated and deprecated, as increasing numbers of younger people are illiterate and probably quite a few other factors. Unemployment metric is not "number of lazy people" lol I am providing the raw number of human beings who live in America do not work - which is the majority. Take away children and elderly and it's still an absurdly high number at 30-35% What would you like to do with that number? Employ them Including under-18s and retirees? Ok remove the 50-75M of those, still like 30-35% unemployment. 50-75m sounds quite low. Where is that stat coming from? This seems to suggest 75 million are under 18. https://www.neilsberg.com/insights/united-states-population-... 72.9 million - https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2... I also said "160M" instead of "168.3 million" for simplicity. 10/10 nitpick