As I’ve been looking into the current US economy and them covering up/lying about recession, I keep seeing liberals saying one thing over and over- that our labor market is very healthy. Is that just another way to say unemployment? This comes across as capitalist speak for, we love how many people are working multiple jobs, “people are getting back to work” etc. Hannity on Fox News was recently ranting about how people should be willing to work “70, 80, even 90 hours a week” during a recession. Classical economics spend so much time bullshitting and using language that sounds better than the truth.

  • @pinkeston@lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    They mean mostly 2 things in our current economy

    Firstly, the unemployment rate is very low compared to historical averages

    Secondly, the rate of change in rise of salaries are much higher now compared to historical changes

    The reason why they keep bringing this up is because the ruling class is brainwashing people to believe that high employment rates and rising wages is a leading factor of high inflation, and not their sanctions on Russia or previous frivolous monetary policies that benefitted the rich (immense Quantitative Easing from 2008-2021) The logic is that since people have more money, they consume more leading to higher demand

    They are brainwashing the masses that a healthy labor market is causing inflation because the Federal Reserve is in the process of raising interest rates and Quantitative Tightening, both of which will crash the stock markets. They have explicitly stated that their goal is to force employers to layoff employees to raise unemployment which will also suppress wages due to flooding the labor market with laid off candidates

    This way, people will believe the Federal Reserve are doing these actions to help bring down inflation and save the economy, when in reality their motives are most likely more aligned with decreasing wages for employers to prop up the falling rate of profit

    Another more sinister reason is that raising interest rates will cause many of the Global South’s economies with IMF and World Bank loans to default on them, leading to forced restructures of loans which will debt trap them. This will also cause their assets to crash in price allowing USA the pick them up for cheap. This has already happened in Sri Lanka. Expect many more to follow

    China, as usually, is attempting to save the world again against the USA by offering many debt relief deals, the most recent example being with Zambia

  • @GloriousDoubleK@lemmygrad.ml
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    132 years ago

    I just did 12 days straight at work while my friends have multiple jobs.

    Sure… It’s “healthy”. There is why better metrics to jidge the condtions of a workforce.

  • @NothingButBits@lemmygrad.ml
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    72 years ago

    In certain sectors of the economy it’s possible for a worker to get multiple job offerings and significantly raise his salary. For the lower income segment of the population, the job market is always bad.

    Because unemployment is quite low in the US, you can make the case that the job market is strong from that perspective. This is merely a phase though because capitalism is unstable, so it’s just a matter of time until another recession hits and unemployment sky rockets.

  • @chad1234@lemmygrad.ml
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    42 years ago

    Healthy is a subjective word and I would not describe it as healthy. They most likely refer to unemployment being low compared to historically which is true.

    Recently population growth has slowed and many workers died or became disabled when they decided to let the disease spread freely. In such a situation, it is possible to both have a recession and low unemployment at the same time. It may become more frequent occurrence in the future so low unemployment does not necessarily reflect a strong economy as it did in the past.