"Underemployment" - - ??? Doesn't EVERY employee think he should run the place?

Every time someone with a background in economics and finance points out that hey, we have low unemployment and incomes are rising, some fringe leftist who doesn't want to admit that he was wrong and thus must find some excuse for the good numbers argues that (1) unemployment is low only because millions of people just gave up looking for work (even though there's no basis for this statement - the unemployment survey asks if you're out of work AND if you're actively looking and the Census Bureau hasn't found any evidence of this mass of people out there who want to work but gave up looking), or (2) that there's this massive "underemployment."





There's no evidence of (2) either. You go to McD's, Wal-Mart, a supermarket and it's immigrants and teens, a few moms - you go to Starbucks and it's college and grad students mainly there for the free coffee. Within the white collar world, we all think we should run the place - and some day some of us will. That's not "underemployment!"

"Underemployment" - - ??? Doesn't EVERY employee think he should run the place?
You are incorrect. The website of the Bureau of Labor Statistics admits that the unemployment statistics do not include people who have stopped looking for work.





There are separate statistics for “discouraged workers” and “other groups not officially counted as unemployed.”