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...[W]hat I see in my law practice, and what I hear from other attorneys around the country, who used to get paychecks, don't get paychecks anymore, list themselves as self-employed because putting "unemployed" in your sales pitch just doesn't cut it, but are in reality just scraping by on sporadic income.
I don't think attorneys are a great gauge of the experience of the typical worker anywhere, let alone a basis for compiling national statistics and producing reports on the experience of the typical worker (which is the aim of the headline numbers).
Most workers aren't going to have heard the sociological and business studies on how it's better to be employed in some capacity -- part-time, self-employed, whatever -- than to be unemployed. Even fewer would be able to put together a good explanation for such "self-employment" in a job interview. Most are going to lose their jobs, sign up for unemployment comp and look for new jobs.
The ability to list oneself that way in any credible way in an interview is nothing if not a "first-world problem," as the kids on Twitter like to say.
It's generally foolish -- and really quite arrogant (in a way that, I think I can say with some credibility, is ludicrously common with lawyers) -- to assume that one of the 10,000 or so people in these stats agencies hasn't thought of the brilliant insight some lawyer has thought about. People talk about this stuff all the time. I know. I've done it. Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.
Sure, the statistics functionaries will have thought of this. Doesn't mean they measure it, because it's hard to measure accurately. It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II
I and most of the attorneys I'm in contact with around the country, do bankruptcies and small business reorganizations, and if you put us all together, we do thousands. Actually a fairly reasonable sample size for misery.
That's not how sampling works. And:
If someone can show me how the growing collection of economic fringe dwellers is being accurately included in the stats, I'd be more than happy to look at it.
You haven't established the premise here of a "growing fringe" to be "accurately included in the stats".
This is a bit more granular than what I asked Chris for a while back on QE and oil, but much the same principle. Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.
-People are pushed towards what I called self-unemployment from all sides, be it companies that more readily hire contractors, the fact that you don't even need to set up a company to do that (you would then simply report earnings as a sole trader -yes that then gives you unlimited liability but the client/employer won't mind), that slight tweaks to the benefit system have meant that it tends to be fiscally better for the first 12 months at least (and there was a sudden jump of about a million alleged self-employed in the quarter that such a measure was introduced) for whoever expects to log even a paltry number of hours
-Jobseeker allowance is so very near to zero
-They make sure you have to jump through hoops to get that very near to zero, to the point where it may not make economic sense. Some people have to spend tens of hours at the job centre that they could use for doing productive stuff such as fixing their house, looking after their kids...
And yes, it does not look great to put unemployed on your resume and, since it costs nothing to claim you were acting as a sole trader, many people did it. A one million boost in the data (while the hours worked did not hugely increase) is not negligible. Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi
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