Economics

I've been in a labor market where there is plenty of labor and not enough jobs, and this is not that. These are good questions though, so let me take a swag at addressing them.

How many of those provide a livable wage?

We don't know, that data isn't collected as part of this exercise.

Aren't just already-employed people picking up a second job?

Possibly, but again those situations wouldn't be captured by this report, as this treats employment as a binary condition: employed/unemployed. If you already have a job and you pick up another, that doesn't change your employment status.

Union labor?

This isn't a full question. I'll assume you're asking about the proportion of union jobs that were created, I'm certain that some union jobs were created, but again, that data isn't collected for this exercise.

This isn't necessarily the feel-good story it seems.

That's probably for the best, macro-economics isn't intended for individual feel good moments. The article doesn't necessarily make me feel 'good', but it acts as an indicator that on a macro-economic level US economic policy is functioning to the extent that 96% of Americans who want a job are able to find one.

Since I already have a job, this does not change much about my situation. However, it does give me some small amount of faith that the technocrats that we've empowered to create policy that enables conditions like these to exist are not completely out of touch with reality.

Politicians and policymakers are beholden to vast numbers of people, and economics is only one component of the issue set they are asked to decide on. You're asking good questions as an individual citizen, but if you need to decide on a policy for 100k people, it becomes much more difficult to identify the signal from the noise if you go into detail with reporting. That's why we collect data and publish broad economic indicators like the employment rate or GDP.

Solving for issues like underemployment and union membership are certainly relevant and admirable, but they're not the problems that the employment rate statistic was created to shed light on, so it is both understandable and expected that you'll be left wanting for more if those are issues you're working to solve and this is the report that you read.

Plus a person is only counted as "unemployed" for so many months after they lost their last job. Supposedly it counts "actively seeking," but I don't know how that is determined.

So after, I think, about 18 or 24 months, someone who hasn't gotten rehired will drop off the "unemployed" statistic.