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Ah shit folks. Some devious trickster hoodwinked the good Democrats into believing the economy was doing well when, in fact, it was doing shit. (archive.is)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Original URL where the cowards have changed the title now: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/11/democrats-tricked-strong-economy-00203464

I don’t believe those who went into this past election taking pride in the unemployment numbers understood that the near-record low unemployment figures — the figure was a mere 4.2 percent in November — counted homeless people doing occasional work as “employed.” But the implications are powerful. If you filter the statistic to include as unemployed people who can’t find anything but part-time work or who make a poverty wage (roughly $25,000), the percentage is actually 23.7 percent. In other words, nearly one of every four workers is functionally unemployed in America today — hardly something to celebrate.

Any fucking questions

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 15 hours ago

I don't think the decades-long trend is as important as:

The real rate not meaningfully changing from 2020-2024,
The rate still being high in absolute terms (1 in 4), and
Democrats running as if the economy was not only doing well, but had improved significantly under Biden.

I haven't flipped through the site a bunch, but I wonder if the higher historical rates are offset to a degree by lower costs of living in, say, 1995.