I get what they are trying to convey, but the stronger message is the more straightforward: there are too many jobs that do not pay enough to live on.

I've been unemployed after graduating for a year and because I didn't use unemployment benefits I didn't show up in the statistics in switzerland. I know many cases like mine.

In particular, the BLS in the US reports 6 different measures of unemployment, U-1 through U-6, each measuring something slightly different. LISEP adds another to the bunch; this is their operationalization:

LISEP’s definition of “True” employment or unemployment accepts the U-3 rate for comparison purposes, but modifies it by adopting two important stipulations. The first stipulation deals with the workweek. To be employed for the purposes of LISEP’s true employment concept, an individual must either have a full-time job (35+ hours per week) or have a part-time job but no desire to be full-time (e.g., students). The second stipulation is that an individual must earn at least $20,000 annually. This annual wage is adjusted for inflation, calculated in January 2020 dollars.

The white paper gives their rationale for the $20,000 cutoff. The "true" name here is marketing, which might honestly be the right play here. My gut says that we already have better statistics than TRU but they smell dry and academic. I would be interested to hear more about their political strategy and philosophy.

FWIW, the institute looks to be chaired by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Ludwig.

...or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $26,000 (in 2025 dollars) annually before taxes.

I couldn't easily tell how they decided on a $26,000 "living wage" figure but in most of the US, even double that is not Easy Street.

The "True Rate of Barely Getting By" is ridiculously high in the US from what I can gather.

--edit-- Top of the range is also varying between each graph, smaller issue but still ... weird. If you're trying to accurately convey percentages, this is not the way to do it.

It all depends on the definition of "Unemployment". Most governments do not count you as unemployed if you've stopped looking for work, been unemployed for over 6 months, or if you made $25 as an Uber driver for 1 hour's work that month.

I have a decent amount of disposable income [1], and I often want to pay people to help with things I’m not particularly skilled at. The problem is that I have no idea how to reliably find the right person or even how to structure the arrangement once I do.

I have lots of examples, but here’s a recent one. A device failed, and replacing it would have cost about $1,000. I watched some videos to see whether I could repair it myself, then spent probably ten hours researching and tinkering with it. I even bought some equipment. It was fun, but after I came close to bricking the thing, I eventually shelved it. Since I rarely use it anyway, it joined my ever-growing list of projects I’ll get back to someday.

The first problem was discovery: how do you find someone with a niche skill who is actually interested in doing a relatively small job?

The second problem was trust. I’ve been burned before by hiring companies based on Internet reviews. A lot of businesses seem to optimize for low-cost labor and throughput. The person who actually shows up has little incentive to care about quality, craftsmanship, or attention to detail.

The third problem was knowledge transfer. Even if I found the right person, explaining the problem and exactly what I wanted might take half as much effort as just doing the work myself.

And this isn’t really a new problem. Funny enough, in the 1990s I built supply chain sourcing systems. Essentially the same problem existed at a macro level: how do you efficiently match specialized demand with capable, trustworthy supply? I recently talked to someone doing similar work today, and apparently it's not close to being solved.

So what do people actually do?

[1] There’s an odd irony here: I’m also one of those people who would like to work but effectively can’t, at least under the current hiring system. I reached my financial goals in 2020. I was between jobs during the pandemic. I assumed I’d find another job fairly easily because my record was fairly impressive. What I wasn’t prepared for was how time-intensive and test-driven interviewing had become. I was over 40 (apparently a red flag), and I had little interest in competing in hustle-culture interview processes. After 5 failed interviews, it was just easier to live off my investments. Yet, I have way too much idle time.

Also where does the discrepancy come from? That's a huge difference (5x!) with the official stat!

Is this actually measuring "underemployment", i.e. people who wish they were working full time but are stuck with some bullshit jobs? (And by bullshit I don't mean what Graeber means, but "this pays like crap and melts my brain but I can't find anything better.")

As long as we are not comparing them in the absolute term, what's the problem?

Some of the gains that have gone to the top need to be paid to spread the work over more people, a 4 day week would be a start.

the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $26,000 (in 2025 dollars) annually before taxes

Seems like reasonable criteria. "Regular" unemployment is

# unemployed/# employed

where unemployed is they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior four weeks, and are currently available to work. But not much criteria in terms of what work people are finding.

However, I fear they conflate "living wage" with desire for full time work in this metric. It also seem to so closely track the official unemployment rate as to not be useful.

Also, as others states, 26k is a surprisingly low number to be called a living wage. I think that number also varies depending on household make up, but I can see why they skipped that complexity.

True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $26,000 (in 2025 dollars) annually before taxes.

I find it odd to use both an hourly specification (>35+ hours) and a minimum $ amount. What about those who are following Tim Ferris dream and are pulling in $100Ks in a 5-hour week?

the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job ...

What is the "U.S. labor force" defined as? Is it a age group thing?

According to the headline rate, unemployment was about the same in 1995. According to this alternative measure of unemployment, it's gone down by around 8% overall.

When split by race, it's gone down the most for Hispanics.

By education, it's gone down the most for people who didn't complete High School.

1.Corporations that sponsor scholars dislike it.

2.Politicians dislike it (because if TRU were adopted as the standard, the unemployment rate a critical metric for evaluating their political achievements—would drastically increase).

3.The current system fundamentally operates on legacy metrics, despite the widespread knowledge that they fail to accurately reflect reality.

It seems to me that TRU captures reality much better, so I am wondering why it is not widely used as the standard.

also it's interesting that these institutes still dont know how to do well understandable and intuitively readable graphs by not starting at a real reference point all thew time (not starting at 0, but sometimes at 20)!

Using data compiled by the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $26,000 (in 2025 dollars) annually before taxes.

The fact that "does not have a full-time job" is accompanied by "but wants one", but "has no job" isn't shows how unserious this statistic is.

So my 90 years old retired grandma is functionally unemployed? Same for my multimillionaire retired 50 years old uncle? Nonsense.

I totally get it if people decide that one of those six numbers are the measure they want, and come up with something they think is better. But why does it always have to be framed as, they’re lying to you? Can you not advocate for your technique without turning it into another stupid conspiracy theory?

  - employed full-time but earning < living wage 
  - employed part-time and earning < living wage 
  - not employed but no longer needing employment (supported some other way, spouse, parents, etc.) 
  - not employed and no longer seeking work (gave up because no jobs) 
  - not employed and actively seeking work 
  ...

Means 51% unemployed people.

Raw figures