s joking-not-joking about cultural¶

Everyone's joking-not-joking about cultural "recession indicators" when we're literally sitting at a functional unemployment rate of nearly a quarter of the labor force.

https://t.co/L5v3MHy0tT It should be noted that, while LISEP's True Rate of Unemployment gives a much better picture of precarity than the standard measure, it still relies on a definition that includes "looking for work," and therefore doesn't capture the full scope of the broader precariat. Namely, those who are economically reliant on members of the official Labor Force. People who are too young, too old, too disabled, etc. to work, and for whom the major breadwinner is a part of that ~23%. Or people outside the labor force who have no one at all. Leaving the workforce entirely due to disability, childcare, elder care, and various other factors, disproportionately affects lower economic strata, who cannot afford to hire caregivers themselves. (This class is, in fact, the same class being hired to care for others.) We haven't even begun to talk about the other invisibilized cohorts that are missed by BLS surveys, particularly criminalized populations. Immigrants, prostitutes, drug dealers, and many others who justifiably turn and walk the other way when official surveyors come around. Undocumented immigrants in particular represent a large chunk of the population whose work is extremely precarious, and who are responsible for a disproportionately large number of dependants (given the difficulty of even able-bodied family members being able to find work). All of this leads to an economic situation that is much more dire than is reflected by that 23% figure. 23% of survey-visible providers are the economic foundation of far more than 23% of the population -- and they struggle to do that.

This is the precariat.