August 30, 2025 • 47 mins
**Labor Day Special!**
Are economic statistics just prosperity propaganda by those in power? The labor market numbers are, indeed, lying to you. Unemployment data has always been presented as rosier than real life. Nearly 1 in 4 workers can be considered functionally unemployed or in poverty-wage jobs.
This episode cuts through the “healthy labor market” headlines to expose the real story behind labor and inflation statistics. We break down how unemployment is calculated and explore how government stats ignore inequality, rising debt, and the growing wealth gap,
We talk about how capitalism (under both Republicans and Democrats) has intensified hardships for working people, with decades of stagnant wages, rising costs, and increasing debt. We also talk about AI and... the great philosopher Homer Simpson.
Tune in for a hard look at what the data isn’t telling you.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
It's time for you and me to stand up for ourselves.
Welcome to Unwashed and Unruly, where we take a hard look at
society even though the world istoo absurd to take seriously.
Today we're talking about unemployment statistics and
jobs, or more specifically, the illusion of jobs and what the
working class is actually facing.
(00:28):
I'm Lola Michaels, joined by theprofessor from the streets, Ezra
Saeed. Hi, Lola.
Hi, everybody. And our derelict Debutante Cam
cruise. What's up guys?
Follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google, or wherever you
find us, and make sure to rate and review.
Every month we get unemployment data from the Bureau of Labor
(00:48):
Statistics, and headlines eithercelebrate how strong the labor
market is or they sound alarms about the next recession.
But here's the problem. Those numbers are always flawed
and misleading. Not because there's someone
fudging the math, but because the way that we define
employment, unemployment, and the labor force is broken.
If you're working 5 hours a weekon poverty wages, you're counted
(01:11):
as employed. But if you've given up looking
because you've been rejected toomany times, you're not counted
at all. Today, we'll be unpacking why
this data is so weaponized to sell the myth of a healthy
economy. And we'll talk about how working
people are overworked, underpaid, and increasingly left
out of the story altogether. Because when nearly one in four
(01:32):
adults can't secure steady, livable work, the question isn't
just who's being left behind. It's why we keep pretending the
system is working at all. So let's begin with what
happened earlier this month. In the spirit of If the facts
don't fit the theory, change thefacts.
Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after
(01:53):
the latest job numbers were released.
He said, quote, the job numbers were rigged in order to make the
Republicans and me look bad. The media and the Democrats
denounced this patently political firing and jumped to
the defense of BLS Representative Robert C Scott, a
ranking Democrat from Virginia, stated the Bureau of Labor
(02:14):
Statistics has always served as a nonpartisan, data-driven
federal agency that provides keyinformation vital to the United
States economy. President Trump's action
politicizes economic data and undermines the independence of
yet another federal agency. So let's delve into this.
(02:35):
Are the numbers rigged? Is this a case of a Biden
appointee trying to make Trump look bad?
Or are BLS numbers just objective, truthful, unfiltered
data? Yeah, I I've been thinking a lot
about this issue. I think that jobs report data is
definitely rigged, but not the way that Trump made it out to
be. So the Bureau of Labor
(02:57):
Statistics, the BLS is responsible for these official
statistics like unemployment andhiring and inflation, which is
called CPI. But the numbers are backward
looking and especially for job related figures, the BLS will
often revise the numbers. And that's basically what pissed
Trump off. So the BLS went in, revised the
(03:18):
numbers for a couple months. It made it clear that the
economy and the job market was much weaker because of course,
the economy is a mess and that'swhat led to controversy and
political fallout. So it's not like someone is
cooking the numbers, but it's just about the way that that
data is collected and determined.
It's super flawed. You mentioned that he didn't
(03:40):
like what the numbers were, but how do they even measure
unemployment? The main problem with
unemployment, which right now isregistered at 4.2%, is that a
huge number of people are left out and not counted.
The official definition of beingunemployed is that you don't
have a job. You're available to work, and
you've actively looked for a jobin the past four weeks.
(04:01):
But is it just four weeks? Because I know lots of people
who are looking for work for months sometimes.
Yeah, and that's one of the problems.
So it's a percentage of people in the labor force without jobs.
If you've been looking for work in the last four weeks, that
means you're applying for jobs. So what that means automatically
is if you've given up looking for work, like you've been
(04:22):
unemployed for a number of months, you're discouraged
because you can't find a job that accommodates your needs or
requirements. You are not considered
unemployed. You're considered having
withdrawn from the labor force entirely.
So if you've stopped looking fora job because of other reasons,
like not just discourage but youhave to care for a sick parent
or child or something like that,you will just be not considered
(04:45):
part of the labor force. So a whole bunch of people who
are unemployed or don't have jobs are not counted.
As. OK, so you've covered who is
unemployed and who they count and don't count as unemployed.
So about the employed, what do they consider to be employed?
(05:05):
So I think the big problem is actually who is considered
employed. So you're considered employed
regardless if you're a part timeworker or a full time worker.
You're considered employed if you have a part time or a
temporary job. This means that there's no
calculation in terms of the quality of life or the quality
of your job or your income. If you work 2 hours a week,
(05:27):
you're considered employed even if your wages are $30.00 for
that week. If you don't have job security
because your hours fluctuate or you're under a temporary
contract, you're also consideredemployed.
And then part of that is you're considered employed.
If you have a low paying full time job that's low skills.
Like maybe you had to take a jobjust to put food on the table.
(05:49):
I would call that underemployed.A lot of people you know aren't
happy with their jobs. They're in jobs that don't
really match their qualifications.
Think about like a white collar technical professional who ends
up in retail just because they need work.
So who's receiving unemployment benefits is not the number that
determines the unemployment rateby the Bureau of Labor
(06:12):
Statistics. Unemployment benefits and the
amount of people accepting or applying or receiving
unemployment benefits doesn't have to do with the unemployment
rate. There is another figure that
measures how many people have applied for benefits, but that's
not the official unemployment measure at all.
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
(06:33):
It's just like really alarming that there is this huge group of
people who want to work more, need to work more, and they're
being considered employed when they probably don't have living
wages. And it just kind of makes me
think about what this number actually represents and how it
is missing out on all this information that says more about
(06:54):
the standard of living that people are experiencing.
Yeah, I think if you have a job,which a lot of us do, the
question is, are you making a livable wage, right.
Like if you have a job and you spend over half your income on
rent or like a big chunk on health insurance and groceries.
This is the the the way that we measured how the economy is
(07:14):
doing. We should measure it based on
how the vast majority of people,working class people and the
oppressed, how they're actually faring.
Yeah, there's just something so weird about having this finite
number that's supposed to represent so much, but it it
seems to be missing a lot about what people are experiencing
day-to-day. So why do you think they do it
(07:37):
this way? If the data that comes out of it
doesn't really measure conditions of the population and
the working population, what is the point of this 4.2% figure or
whatever the figure comes out tobe that they release every
month? Yeah.
I mean, I think the first thing to remember is that statistics
are not facts. Facts are very stubborn, but
(07:58):
statistics are pliable. The statistics are just numbers.
They're not magical, they're notreligious.
They're always debated because there's always different ways to
collect those numbers and different ways to interpret
those numbers. So in that sense, it is
political. But I don't think it's political
in a partisan sense. Like the way that the Democrats
are presenting it right now, like, oh, Trump is, you know, so
(08:19):
upset with these numbers. I think there's not actually a
divide on this question in termsof Democrats and Republicans.
Both of these parties have been in power over the last several
decades. They've been responsible for
overseeing the dismantling of social programs, the decimation
of the unions, rich getting richer, the question of of wages
(08:39):
being stagnated. None of these statistics
actually measure inequality or the wealth gap.
They don't calculate the real standard of living.
It's of course important for people to have jobs, but so is
healthcare, so is a social safety net.
It's of course important to measure the rate of change of
(09:01):
prices because people are dealing with an economy where
they can't afford anything. People just don't have the
money. That's why people feel like
we're in a recession. So when they measure it the way
they do, what are they measuring?
What good does this number do for government officials and
bureaucrats? I think that it's not a very
(09:21):
effective measure at all, but the the main reason why it
matters at all, it matters to employers and business owners
and it matters to the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve will use those numbers basically to
determine if we're in a recession, if they should adjust
interest rates up or down. An interest rate hike or an
(09:43):
interest rate reduction is goingto either increase or lower the
cost of borrowing. So that's the cost of mortgages,
your credit cards, your auto loans, things like that.
And what the BLS says about the economy.
Then the Federal Reserve says, oh, this is how we're
interpreting where the economy is going to go.
(10:04):
And whatever they say then movesthe markets.
So basically, it's just a usefultool for companies trying to
project customer demand, plan future hiring or speculate about
where they should put their investment, but it doesn't
actually mean that they're goingto give people any more benefits
(10:24):
or protections for what they're dealing with in their life.
Yeah. So the the number has a lot more
meaning to business owners and people who are involved in the
markets and the government than it actually means to people.
And I think you mentioned wealthinequality before.
And it's really frustrating for working class people like me to
(10:45):
hear that the economy is doing great and that the numbers are
up in the stock market. And I don't feel like any of
those numbers reflect my life. So is there any other
institutions who are measuring this in a different way and kind
of taking into account more variables and looking at it in a
different broader way? There's there is one measure
(11:06):
that the BLS uses that's a different figure.
It's not talked about very much.It's usually about twice as much
as the unemployment figure, but I still think it's pretty
inadequate. The main figure that I look at
is what's called functional unemployment.
So basically, functional unemployment means that you have
(11:28):
no job, or you work fewer than 35 hours a week, but you want
full time employment. So it's trying to include some
of those people who are underemployed, like you were
saying. Exactly.
Or it's also including people who make less than $25,000 a
year. Which is, which is.
Extremely. Low.
Does that kind of align with thefederal minimum wage?
Because I know that's, I think around 7 something right now.
(11:52):
Yeah. And I think that's the point is
that no one can survive off of that.
And so functional unemployment, this is a measure that's
actually by an organization that's run by Jean Ludwig.
It's called the Ludwig Institutefor Shared Economic Prosperity.
Their calculation, and they do alot of statistical analysis
called the true rate of unemployment.
And when they calculate this, it's like 6 times higher.
(12:16):
Wow. Then the the official BLS
numbers, So right now and it's been this way for a couple
months actually right now it's Aat around almost 25%.
And you said earlier the government says 4.2%.
Yes, so. 25 versus 4.2, yes. And of course it that and then
it is really different for, you know, Black people and Latino
(12:39):
people because it's always higher.
The bottom line with that measure and why I think it's
more of a useful metric is because it incorporates people
who don't have steady work and they don't earn living wages.
Because why does it matter if you're considered employed if
you can't pay for housing or food?
Yeah, exactly 1 of. The points that you made earlier
(13:02):
is that statistics are just numbers.
They're pliable. They can prove anything.
Or is that Great American cultural icon Homer Simpson once
put it? People can come up with
statistics to prove anything. 40% of all people know that, so
I think I have. Another funny one.
Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive.
(13:25):
What they conceal is also prettyimportant.
That's. Pretty good.
But you know, it's very hard to go against a philosopher like
Homer Simpson. Exactly.
Yeah. So.
OK, so let's move away from statistics for a minute.
We'll come back to them, but I just want to move away from them
for a minute. And I think it might be useful
to talk a little bit about what are the actual conditions of
(13:47):
working people in this country. Because from everything I know
from personal experience, you know, every time I go to the
grocery store, I feel like goingon a riot because I, I see the
prices of the things that I buy week in and week out.
Just keep going up and up and upto, to everything you see in the
data. It tells you the lives of
(14:07):
working people in what is supposed to be the richest
country on earth are increasingly getting worse and
worse. What are the conditions that
working people face in this country?
Let's begin with wages. What have wages been like over
the last 40-50 years? Have they have they grown with
inflation? Have they remained steady?
(14:28):
Have they declined? Yeah.
And that's The thing is that real wages, you have to look at
real wages because they measure the amount of money you make
adjusted for the amount that youpay for things.
Those have not changed in decades.
They haven't gone up since the 1970s.
When people are talking about, oh, you can't make ends meet,
(14:49):
what is the solution that they usually give you?
Go get. A job.
Get a second job. Go get a second job.
Go get a second job. Yeah.
So get a. Go find a hustle.
So get multiple streams of income because one income
doesn't cut it anymore, which iswhy you have teachers driving
Ubers or get a higher paid job, which is like with what army,
(15:11):
right? So I think that's really
important to look at. Also look at the job market
right now. If you get laid off from a job,
you're looking at a extremely competitive job market where you
can't really find work for years.
How long do unemployment benefits last on average?
(15:34):
Usually up to 26 weeks. So what do you do in that time
period when you're looking for work and you can't collect
unemployment benefits? How do you how do you survive?
So I think that's. One of the reasons people do
turn towards the gig economy because it's just easy work to
get, but can you talk a little bit more about what it's like to
(15:56):
work for DoorDash or Uber or oneof those other companies and how
it's less adequate than working for a traditional employer?
I won't go into all the details,but there's a really good
episode by John Oliver on the gig economy and their
conditions. But basically, when you're a gig
worker, you're considered an independent contractor, right?
(16:17):
You work for an online app, you're employed on a task or
project basis. And it's not just Lyft, Uber,
DoorDash, delivery people. It's also Task Rabbit and
editorial and design folks. You have to pay for all your own
materials. You have to pay for your gas,
for your car, for your computer,for your supplies.
Also, if you don't have work andyou're a gig worker, you can't
(16:41):
collect unemployment benefits. You're not eligible.
So if you work for Uber for fivemonths or a year, whatever, and
you stop working for Uber, you can't qualify for unemployment.
You don't. Qualify for unemployment because
you're classified as an independent contractor.
It's a it's a misnomer right, but it's presented as you're
self-employed. You also during that time when
you're a gig worker, you also don't get benefits.
(17:04):
You don't get health insurance or paid time off or retirement
plans. Gig work has exploded over the
last 10 years. Obviously people think about it
in terms of exponential growth since COVID, but even before
that. And it's this trend of these
temporary kind of on demand jobs.
It's the same thing with contractor or freelancer
positions. Freelancers are going to take
(17:26):
over the the job market. And when you're a freelancer,
yeah, you get your own clients, you got flexibility, etcetera,
etcetera. But you have to pay for all your
benefits out of pocket. And we know how expensive that
is. Basically, if you don't get
work, you don't get work. If you're a contractor, it's
temporary, it's only for a specific period of time.
So there's no stability or security.
(17:48):
One of the. Examples that I remember from a
few years ago that I think is still a very much a living
example that ties into these contract workers are supposedly
self-employed workers is port truckers in the Bay Area and
other ports where they have to pay to buy their own trucks or
finance their own trucks. And the cost of insurance, the
(18:09):
cost of the gas, everything. They're they're considered
independent contractors. They are workers on the docks.
They bring in goods and then they take away goods.
But they're not treated as such.And it's clearly a money saving
scheme by the bosses to lower labor costs.
Yeah. I I do think that the Port
(18:30):
Trekkers are a good example. I think basically what you're
just looking at is it the trajectory of decline in
unionization, the wage stagnation that we talked about
before, prices going up. People are a lot more dependent
on credit. Yeah, I.
Speaking of debt, I know so manypeople with student debt who
just kind of gave up on paying. They just had to choose between
(18:52):
being able to live and pay off their student debt and now
they've destroyed their credit score.
And that has all sorts of implications when it comes to
getting a house or a car or borrowing money.
So, yeah, this is all just very depressing to me.
Yes. Student debt is a perfect
example because you're actually paying for education.
You you become an indentured servant to this debt where you
(19:14):
have to pay exorbitant interest for taking out money to get an
education that doesn't really get you anywhere.
So before maybe you would get a degree hoping that that degree
would land you a high paying job.
That's not the case anymore, yeah.
Well, most people I know who have degrees have jobs that are
(19:37):
considered above average. But even with their above
average salary, it's not like they're living lives of luxury.
They kind of have to choose between taking an annual
vacation or being able to have any savings.
And yeah, I just feel like it's very The situation for the
middle class in America right now is very desperate.
Yeah. Part of it is the capitalist
(19:57):
boom bust cycle. You're always going to have wage
exploitation under capitalism. But things have just gotten so
much worse. I think a perfect example is the
amount of debt that people are facing for basic things like
education, but also relying on debt for groceries.
Yeah, just to. Live people who have children.
It's kind of impossible, yeah. And you have these predatory
(20:22):
banks and Finserv companies, right?
Financial services companies trying to capitalize on people's
despair and economic scarcity byoffering buy now, pay later
plans for for for take out. Yeah.
Well, one of the things with thejob market on the mid low end of
(20:44):
it and the question of college degrees that I think is really
interesting is you have a lot ofjobs that in the past did not
require a college degree. A lot of these are office jobs,
did not require a college degreeto get, and in the present
require at least a bachelor's degree.
But that bachelor's degree may land you at such a massive
(21:07):
student debt. And the job that you now use
your bachelor's degree to get isn't going to cover that kind
of student debt. So you're kind of damned if you
do and damned if you don't. If you don't get the degree and
don't acquire the student debt, you can't get the job that a
couple of decades ago you might have been able to get.
And if you do get the degree andthen our burden with that debt,
(21:30):
that kind of job isn't going to be able to pay off that debt and
you're stuck with it for decadesor the rest of your life.
It's. So vicious.
I always think about how stark it is in terms of generational
differences. Like you have this younger
generation that's dealing with this 10s of thousands of dollars
in student debt. And so they're bound to that.
(21:51):
They can't afford anything else.How are they going to afford to
take out a mortgage on a home? How are they going to afford
ever in their lives home ownership?
It seems completely a utopic pipe dream to be able to do
that. And what is the next generation
going to look like? I have to talk about AI, of
course, because we're talking about the job market because
(22:13):
right now things feel very dire.There's a reason why people are
terrified of AI and that's because by 2030, so that's in
five years, 30% of U.S. jobs could be automated.
That's the the prediction and 60% significantly altered by AI
(22:34):
tools. So that's just five years,
that's how quickly it's advancing in 20 years by twenty,
4550% of jobs that exist right now could be potentially fully
automated. We're all.
Going to be homeless and out of a job guys I don't know where
the. AI statistics are going to go in
the future. Exactly.
And I don't know that anybody knows for sure.
(22:56):
I mean, they're making these projections and possibilities,
and it's very possible. But one thing I do know is with
the history of capitalism, with every technological leap, on the
one hand you get these amazing technological advances.
On the other hand, they come at the expense of working people.
You know, there's a thought experiment you could do.
If you have 500 workers doing a job and you have a machine that
(23:18):
does the work of these 500 or 450 of those workers, you would
think in a rational world those 450 workers could maybe enjoy
life a bit more because they don't have to suffer as much and
do as much work, or the work could be spread around.
But under capitalism, what it means is they become pauperized,
they become poor, they become basically beggars for everyday
(23:41):
necessities. And I think when you mentioned
the next generation and what they're going to face, I think
what you're talking about is a declining American empire unable
to sustain conditions of life like it was able to sustain in
the past. And it's just going to keep
getting worse. I don't know how else to look at
it. Yeah, I think that.
(24:02):
Declining empire is a key part of this, that this very small
percent of people at the top have offloaded the cost of this
declining empire onto people. And so the working class has to
absorb all of it. That's why the very small
percentage of people at the top,the capitalist owners and the
investors, are making a killing.They're managing very well.
(24:25):
And it's also why talking about generational questions, how are
you actually going to be able ifyou're not in that tiny, tiny
minuscule top percent that like owns the stocks and bonds or
whatever, how are you actually going to have enough savings to
retire? And especially since like.
(24:45):
I'm like personally so worried about that.
I know that Social Security is pretty meager from my own
knowledge and experience, if it's even there by the.
Time, yeah. And I know that I'm not the only
person living paycheck to paycheck in the millennial
generation. And I just don't see how this is
not going to be a massive crisiswhen you know the latter end of
(25:07):
Gen. X Millennials and Gen.
Z start retiring and just don't have any savings at all to live
off of, I'm of the opinion. That the ruling class in this
country thinks the population isliving too long.
Kill them off early. Oh my.
God are you? Are you?
Suggesting we're going to they're going to start murdering
us. No.
Well. Yes, in a way.
In a way it's a you wait till you die.
(25:29):
It's a slow death. Yeah, it's the slow.
Death of working until you die. My current job right now,
there's somebody that we were dealing with that was having a
hard time understanding what we were trying to ask them to do.
And so then I finally reached out to someone else in the in
that office and I said, why? What am I doing wrong?
(25:50):
How am I, how can I explain thisbetter to this person?
Now this person is a contracted out worker.
They're not part of the company where I work.
That contracted out worker is a 94 year old woman, 94.
I swear. Is a 94 year old woman?
What the hell is a 94 year old woman doing working that's so
(26:12):
depressing. That's yeah, they will kill us.
Early. And they will kill us early by
working us to death. I mean, I'll give you a very
simple expression of what we allmean by that.
Here's a New York Times headlinefrom from April of this year.
To escape the grind, young people turn to mini retirements.
And I remember seeing that headline and going, what the
(26:34):
Hell's a mini retirement? You know what I mean?
A retirement is it's a vacation.That's what they're calling
somebody going on vacation, a mini retirement.
How do you even have What is to go on?
A vacation? Well, let's say.
We'll never afford a real. Let's say that.
Yeah. Let's say you.
Can't afford to go on vacation, But you're not supposed to do
(26:55):
that. You're supposed to work and work
and work and work and then drop dead.
That's why you have a 94 year old woman still working.
And that's why you you walk intoa Walmart, you see the so-called
greeters who are really old people shouldn't be working.
You should be enjoying the twilight of their years.
This country is obscene. And yeah, I do think the
American ruling class thinks theAmerican populace as a whole is
(27:17):
living too long and would ratherus die early so then they don't
have to worry about things like retirement.
So something I've been. Seeing online is a trend of
young people moving out of the United States because the
standard of living is better at other places.
I've been seeing a lot of videoson TikTok of people moving to
China and it's just wildly different.
(27:40):
The cities are more modern, they're cleaner, and the way the
government works is very different.
So one of the things I saw is that some companies actually
subsidized people's housing. So you pay maybe 500 U.S.
dollars for a three bedroom apartment in a modern city and
your company pays half of it. And of course the salaries are
(28:02):
lower there. But a lot of people are digital
nomads and they're kind of taking their U.S. dollars with
them other places. And yeah, I feel like the
desperation has people kind of looking elsewhere, especially
also retirees trying to make their dollars go farther in
places like Vietnam and the Philippines.
And we mentioned wage stagnationearlier.
(28:22):
One of my favorite things to do to quell my anger is to mess
around with the USA vax.org inflation calculator.
And $15,000 now is equal to $109,000 in 1972.
So when your parents shame you for all of your bad financial
choices, think about how their minimum wage job is probably
(28:44):
equal to $80,000. Yeah, and I I want.
To talk about that too, because it ties in with how statistics
are so misleading. So besides the unemployment
rate, which is completely messedup, the inflation rate is also
totally misunderstood and deceiving.
So when you hear people talk about how inflation is going
down, right? You've heard that.
(29:04):
So it was like after COVID, thatwas really, really high
inflation. They say inflation is going
down, but it's at the rate of inflation that is going down
South. That's year over year.
It's an annual rate. So if inflation.
Goes down and milk is $5. It's not like milk is going to
be 450 exactly. Exactly.
That's the point is that prices are not going down at all.
(29:27):
There's there's so much wrong with this besides the fact that
what you're saying is correct. The the cat is out of the bag,
right? Those prices are there, they're
there to stay, and they're just going to keep getting higher,
just maybe at a lower rate. But also the way that inflation
is measured, it's this quote UN quote, basket of goods, which is
all clumped together. And so certain things are going
(29:50):
to be more expensive than others.
And then depending on who you are in your economic situation
and your family situation and where you live, your personal
inflation rate could be very different.
So if you have a family of four and you live in a urban city and
you have a car, so you're payingfor gas and you have a home, so
(30:12):
you're paying for electricity and groceries, your inflation,
your personal inflation rate is going to be a lot higher than if
you're a single person living inthe mountains.
So the inflation rate for everyone is fundamentally
different, but also prices are just not going down.
Also, corporations are always juicing their profit margins.
(30:35):
The cost of business is going down and they don't hide that.
Like CE OS are always boasting about their profits and at the
same time they boast about theirability to raise prices on
consumers. So there's a ton of price
gouging going on where we can betold anything like, oh, well,
it's just inflation. Or right now we're being told,
(30:56):
well, it's tariffs that are raising the cost of things, but
it could be anything. We just have to eat it.
We don't have a choice. Well, I remember around.
COVID it was being blamed on thefact that a lot of Americans
supply chain. No.
No, no. Well, yeah, the supply chain,
but also that a lot of Americansgot, what was it a measly 1600
dollars or two grand total checks.
(31:18):
Oh, the stimulus, the stimulus, right.
And that somehow that is the reason, because you Americans
got a little bit of money. Meanwhile, that's what Israel
gets in an hour. A minute, actually.
Yeah, because we. Deigned to send you something.
It has now driven inflation to such a rate that that money is
(31:38):
worthless now. That's totally true, because
they did. Talk about that as one of the
quote, UN quote, reasons for thehigh inflation rate was that
there was too much money being circulated in the economy when
they've actually done studies that show that people took those
measly stimulus checks and they used it, they put it into
savings or that they paid off debt.
Exactly, Exactly. Yeah.
(31:59):
They weren't they weren't going around living off the hog on No,
they were like they got I'm. Drowning a little bit less,
yeah. Scene.
OK, we've been talking about theconditions and what people in
this country as a generality face.
But I think one of the things weshould touch on is that as you
move into particular sectors of the population, conditions
(32:23):
become more acute. I'm thinking of farm workers,
the mostly immigrant and undocumented farm workers who
work in California's Central Valley and other farm lands.
I'm also thinking of the perennial last hired, first
fired populace of America, the black population and in in all
(32:44):
of these metrics and even if youjust take the statistics that do
get released, populations like these go far below what is the
average. And the conditions that we are
all suffering, including white workers are expressed so much
more starkly for, for example, the black populace in America.
(33:07):
Yeah, I would say that the. Situation is definitely more
acute for black people in this country.
The unemployment rate has alwaysbeen roughly double that of
whites for several decades. And then there's also all the
stuff that's wrapped up into thejob market, employment
discrimination, the criminalization of black youth.
(33:28):
Ezra, you mentioned the last hired, first fired in terms of
where they stand in the job market and the deep seated
oppression within the job market.
Also, I think in terms of women,women are facing a lot more
responsibility in terms of beingthe primary caregivers and
families. Even though they have entered
(33:50):
the workforce a lot more, they've actually left the labor
force. I think the figures are in the
first half of 2025 / 200,000 women ages 20 or over have left
the labor force entirely. Well, I mean when childcare.
Is as expensive as it is. That totally makes sense, yeah.
(34:10):
How do you balance? Work and family and how do you
do it financially right, but that raises.
A whole other thing which is a single income household let's
say that these women are living with somebody who's working the
ability of a single income household in this country to
sustain a family is incredibly difficult a lot of the people I
(34:34):
know who who. Have kids, actually have a lot
of debt? Yeah.
And also if you're a stay at. Home caregiver, you are not
considered part of the labor force, so you're kind of like
opted out of the. Labor force technically,
regardless of whether. It's your choice or not, but the
point is, is for those statistics, going back to those
(34:54):
statistics, the unemployment numbers, that unemployment
figure of you're out of a job, you're able to work and you've
been looking for the last four weeks.
That only applies to people who are considered part of the labor
force. The labor force is not the
entire population. The labor force is like 60% of
the population, you know, hearing.
How this number is kind of bullshit is helpful for me
(35:18):
because the number 4.2 does not represent the reality that I see
in the job market. Yeah.
And I think that's the. Problem if you have millions of
people missing from the workforce and the unemployment
rate is being artificially depressed and it gets used.
By the rulers for their particular purposes, which are
usually to attack the bigger benefits that the population
(35:40):
gets. Totally.
One of the things I you notice as a pattern, as if the
unemployment figures and similarsuch metrics come out with
numbers that the political establishment consider to be
favorable. What they will do is say, well,
things are going so well, we need to cut entitlements.
What they call entitlements. The meager benefits that people
get if the numbers come out and they're not very good, then they
(36:03):
will say, well, we need to cut entitlements because we can't
afford to keep spending like that.
The country's going into debt either way they they come at it.
It's being used as a cudgel to go after the small amount of
benefits that this country givesout to the population, which are
historically the result of massive struggles by working
people in this country. What you said about entitlements
(36:24):
is. Totally true, because even just
that word that's used, entitlements, which is used to
demonize and villainize people who are struggling, and it's
totally tied to this idea that poor people are completely
undeserving. Rich people like Elon Musk are
totally deserving. They can get as many bailouts as
they want. They get all their entitlements.
They're never demonized. Yeah, the fact that Elon Musk
(36:47):
get. Tax breaks.
It makes me insane. This country really believes
that. If you are wealthy and have
quote UN quote made it, it meansyou're good.
And if you are poor and impoverished, it means you're
bad. Yeah, you are to blame for your
own lot. Yeah, this country.
Criminalizes poverty. Yeah.
And what you were saying before.About how companies use what's
(37:10):
happening in the economy as an excuse.
I can't even tell you how often I hear the term economic
headwinds. What does that even mean?
Economic to to a normal human being it means that.
The business is not it's, it doesn't mean anything because
(37:32):
corporate profits are still breaking records.
So I can't even say that it means anything.
It literally means we might not get as many profits as we
projected, so we're going to have to cut.
Your wages in advance benefits. Or job.
In advance exactly and. What's really messed up, of
course, is that then it becomes this race to the bottom.
(37:57):
You have unionization rights that have plummeted.
You have fewer protections, fewer pensions, like who gets a
pension anymore. So that's interesting.
And I'm like to use it to pivot a little bit to statistics, but
ones that I think might actuallybe indicative.
Sorry, Sir, Lies. Damn lies and statistics.
(38:19):
As Mark Twain said, let's see the lies.
And the damn lies and the statistics here.
One of the things that's interesting when you talk about
previous generations, what people harken back to when
America was supposedly great in the 1950s and 60s, is you had a
much higher unionization rate that resulted in higher wages
and benefits for working people.But the anchor of that
(38:42):
unionization, and indeed the anchor of the whole economy, was
manufacturing. That was where the American
economy was strong. And partly it had to do with the
fact, which we're not going to get into here, but it had to do
the fact that after the Second World War, the US was basically
the only economy left standing among the big advanced
(39:02):
capitalist countries. But so this is interesting.
In 1960, if you look at the approximate share of the gross
domestic product or gross national products, they called
it the time. The number one part of the share
was manufacturing. That doesn't include service or
anything. And it accounted for 28%.
If you go down to what was then #4 they had a category called
(39:26):
finance, insurance and real estate.
But sometimes it's, it's abbreviated as FIRE and it's
what you can call trading in fictitious capital, stocks,
bonds, investments, those kinds of things that accounted in
nineteen, 6413%, so 28%. And then #4 at 13%, what I'll
(39:47):
call rentier capitalism. Fast forward to this year, 2025
GDP breakdown number one at 21 percent is rentier.
Capitalism is fire, finance, insurance and real estate, and
#5 is manufacturing at 11 percent.
The pain that working people arefeeling isn't just because a job
(40:12):
is paying less money, it's because the jobs that are
available are shit jobs. What used to be good, decent
paying manufacturing jobs are disappearing and have
disappeared and have long been disappearing.
And what it you instead get is abunch of capitalist making a
ridiculous amount of money trading in investments and the
(40:35):
like, and basically these service industry jobs that are,
you know, as an old friend of ofours like to call Mick jobs and
workers are feeling the pain of that.
And it's also translated into the destruction of these massive
manufacturing unions. So first of all.
Manufacturing jobs are not coming back.
(40:57):
No. Second of all, they left because
the capitalist class found cheaper sources of Labor abroad.
Yep. Not that we have to get into all
the insurance and outs of it, but you have this sort of circus
show happening in this country since Trump took office of
tariffs, tariffs on this country.
(41:17):
Then the tariffs get suspended and they come back and they get
suspended. And there's supposed reason for
that is you're going to put those tariffs on because they're
going to somehow bring jobs backto America, and manufacturing
jobs specifically, they're not. But the way it gets talked
about, whether it's by Trump or by others, including Democrats,
is that the loss of manufacturing jobs is something
(41:38):
that happened to America. Oh, poor America had suffered
this. No, it was done to America by
American capitalist for the reason that you laid out,
because they saw that manufacturing was cheaper abroad
and went for that. But for another reason as well.
When you started getting in the 1960s, W European and Japanese
(41:58):
capitalist, having recovered from the Second World War,
competing with the US, American capitalist made a decision that
it is far cheaper to not engage in that direct competition and
instead engage in speculation asa way to bring in massive
profits. As opposed to having to, for
example, reinvest in all your factories and bring them up to
(42:20):
speed so they can compete with Japanese capitals.
Just let them go ship off the manufacturing somewhere else and
we're going to make our money inspeculation.
And you know what? They were right for them.
The rest of the country went to hell, but they've made massive
profits and they're going to continue to do it.
That's why it's never coming back.
So the guillotines come up. Guillotine.
(42:43):
Guillotine. Do we pronounce it guillotine
or? Guillotine.
We pronounce it the American. Way guillotine.
You know, and we're talking a lot about.
Manufacturing and obviously thatwas a really huge portion of the
American workforce. And then I think after that, one
(43:03):
of our biggest industries was tech.
And now with AI coming, we're already seeing huge layoffs in
that industry. So the future seems very, very
uncertain. And like you said, manufacturing
is certainly not coming back. We just don't have the
infrastructure or even the will,as you guys say also.
That's very relevant. This is drifting a little bit,
but into the AI point is that all these companies invested A
(43:27):
tremendous amount in AII, think it was like 30 or 40 billion
into Gen. AI and they have gotten 0
returns. 95% of. Organizations that invested
heavily in AI have gotten no returns for their investment
whatsoever, which is why I'm a little.
Bit dubious about whether really30 or 50%, yeah, that's when
(43:51):
that 20. 40 number or whatever it is you're by 20-30 are going.
To be taken by AII mean it's possible.
This technology is young, it's growing, but it hasn't really
reached that level of maturity yet.
Yet, but it is growing fast. And also, regardless of where it
goes or what the numbers are, the people on the bottom are
(44:14):
going to pay the price absolutely.
And the people at the. TOP are going to do everything
in their power to make sure thathappens.
It's just a further further. Concentration of wealth, Yeah, I
was just thinking. You know, having used Homer
Simpson earlier as a paragon of of American culture and
philosophy, I always think it's interesting that when The
Simpsons first aired, it was I think 1989.
(44:37):
The character was Homer Simpson at a dead end job.
Marge Simpson as a stay at home mom.
Literally it's the standard American family from the 1950s.
Two and a half kids, Bart, Lisa and the half kid being Maggie.
They had a cat and a dog and they lived in a house, 2 cars,
everything. I mean, the dog was pretty
skinny. The dog was pretty skinny.
(44:59):
You're right, the dog was prettyskinny and it was always about
how they were having a hard timemaking ends meet.
But you have to always remember it was a one income household.
And when it came out in 1989, I would say it was still kind of
believable, but, but on the cuspof it not being believable, you
know, I, I, I don't know if I would.
(45:19):
Classify it as a dead end job, though.
He worked at a nuclear power plant and he was an idiot.
But that I think was a part of it.
Is that like anybody, no collegedegree could have this job.
So I had epitomized that, I think exactly, exactly and at
one point. There was one one episode where,
Oh my God, Homer's gone, how arewe going to replace him?
And it was just a, a stick hanging on a, a brick hanging on
(45:40):
a stick. And that basically did Homer's
job for a week while he was gone.
But it was believable. I think in 1989 was at that very
cusp where you could have a one income household like that and
it didn't strain credulity too much.
I think if that show were to launch today and you have that
(46:02):
setting, it would no one would even believe.
It would just be impossible to even conceive A to have that
setting today. Well, none of us are.
Doing as good as Homer, that's for sure.
That's for sure. So what's the?
Retirement plan. Guys, I don't know the.
Apocalypse is my. Retirement plan, I think that's
(46:22):
all of our retirement. Plan at this point, but.
We don't love anybody who doesn't love us.
Thanks for listening to Unwashed.
And Unruly because we can't afford anything except a little
bit of truth. Please follow us on Spotify,
Apple Podcast, Google, or wherever you find us.
(46:43):
Make sure to rate and review andsend us your thoughts to
unwashedunruly@gmail.com.
It's time for you and me to stand up for ourselves.
Welcome to Unwashed and Unruly, where we take a hard look at
society even though the world istoo absurd to take seriously.
Today we're talking about unemployment statistics and
jobs, or more specifically, the illusion of jobs and what the
working class is actually facing.
(00:28):
I'm Lola Michaels, joined by theprofessor from the streets, Ezra
Saeed. Hi, Lola.
Hi, everybody. And our derelict Debutante Cam
cruise. What's up guys?
Follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google, or wherever you
find us, and make sure to rate and review.
Every month we get unemployment data from the Bureau of Labor
(00:48):
Statistics, and headlines eithercelebrate how strong the labor
market is or they sound alarms about the next recession.
But here's the problem. Those numbers are always flawed
and misleading. Not because there's someone
fudging the math, but because the way that we define
employment, unemployment, and the labor force is broken.
If you're working 5 hours a weekon poverty wages, you're counted
(01:11):
as employed. But if you've given up looking
because you've been rejected toomany times, you're not counted
at all. Today, we'll be unpacking why
this data is so weaponized to sell the myth of a healthy
economy. And we'll talk about how working
people are overworked, underpaid, and increasingly left
out of the story altogether. Because when nearly one in four
(01:32):
adults can't secure steady, livable work, the question isn't
just who's being left behind. It's why we keep pretending the
system is working at all. So let's begin with what
happened earlier this month. In the spirit of If the facts
don't fit the theory, change thefacts.
Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after
(01:53):
the latest job numbers were released.
He said, quote, the job numbers were rigged in order to make the
Republicans and me look bad. The media and the Democrats
denounced this patently political firing and jumped to
the defense of BLS Representative Robert C Scott, a
ranking Democrat from Virginia, stated the Bureau of Labor
(02:14):
Statistics has always served as a nonpartisan, data-driven
federal agency that provides keyinformation vital to the United
States economy. President Trump's action
politicizes economic data and undermines the independence of
yet another federal agency. So let's delve into this.
(02:35):
Are the numbers rigged? Is this a case of a Biden
appointee trying to make Trump look bad?
Or are BLS numbers just objective, truthful, unfiltered
data? Yeah, I I've been thinking a lot
about this issue. I think that jobs report data is
definitely rigged, but not the way that Trump made it out to
be. So the Bureau of Labor
(02:57):
Statistics, the BLS is responsible for these official
statistics like unemployment andhiring and inflation, which is
called CPI. But the numbers are backward
looking and especially for job related figures, the BLS will
often revise the numbers. And that's basically what pissed
Trump off. So the BLS went in, revised the
(03:18):
numbers for a couple months. It made it clear that the
economy and the job market was much weaker because of course,
the economy is a mess and that'swhat led to controversy and
political fallout. So it's not like someone is
cooking the numbers, but it's just about the way that that
data is collected and determined.
It's super flawed. You mentioned that he didn't
(03:40):
like what the numbers were, but how do they even measure
unemployment? The main problem with
unemployment, which right now isregistered at 4.2%, is that a
huge number of people are left out and not counted.
The official definition of beingunemployed is that you don't
have a job. You're available to work, and
you've actively looked for a jobin the past four weeks.
(04:01):
But is it just four weeks? Because I know lots of people
who are looking for work for months sometimes.
Yeah, and that's one of the problems.
So it's a percentage of people in the labor force without jobs.
If you've been looking for work in the last four weeks, that
means you're applying for jobs. So what that means automatically
is if you've given up looking for work, like you've been
(04:22):
unemployed for a number of months, you're discouraged
because you can't find a job that accommodates your needs or
requirements. You are not considered
unemployed. You're considered having
withdrawn from the labor force entirely.
So if you've stopped looking fora job because of other reasons,
like not just discourage but youhave to care for a sick parent
or child or something like that,you will just be not considered
(04:45):
part of the labor force. So a whole bunch of people who
are unemployed or don't have jobs are not counted.
As. OK, so you've covered who is
unemployed and who they count and don't count as unemployed.
So about the employed, what do they consider to be employed?
(05:05):
So I think the big problem is actually who is considered
employed. So you're considered employed
regardless if you're a part timeworker or a full time worker.
You're considered employed if you have a part time or a
temporary job. This means that there's no
calculation in terms of the quality of life or the quality
of your job or your income. If you work 2 hours a week,
(05:27):
you're considered employed even if your wages are $30.00 for
that week. If you don't have job security
because your hours fluctuate or you're under a temporary
contract, you're also consideredemployed.
And then part of that is you're considered employed.
If you have a low paying full time job that's low skills.
Like maybe you had to take a jobjust to put food on the table.
(05:49):
I would call that underemployed.A lot of people you know aren't
happy with their jobs. They're in jobs that don't
really match their qualifications.
Think about like a white collar technical professional who ends
up in retail just because they need work.
So who's receiving unemployment benefits is not the number that
determines the unemployment rateby the Bureau of Labor
(06:12):
Statistics. Unemployment benefits and the
amount of people accepting or applying or receiving
unemployment benefits doesn't have to do with the unemployment
rate. There is another figure that
measures how many people have applied for benefits, but that's
not the official unemployment measure at all.
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
(06:33):
It's just like really alarming that there is this huge group of
people who want to work more, need to work more, and they're
being considered employed when they probably don't have living
wages. And it just kind of makes me
think about what this number actually represents and how it
is missing out on all this information that says more about
(06:54):
the standard of living that people are experiencing.
Yeah, I think if you have a job,which a lot of us do, the
question is, are you making a livable wage, right.
Like if you have a job and you spend over half your income on
rent or like a big chunk on health insurance and groceries.
This is the the the way that we measured how the economy is
(07:14):
doing. We should measure it based on
how the vast majority of people,working class people and the
oppressed, how they're actually faring.
Yeah, there's just something so weird about having this finite
number that's supposed to represent so much, but it it
seems to be missing a lot about what people are experiencing
day-to-day. So why do you think they do it
(07:37):
this way? If the data that comes out of it
doesn't really measure conditions of the population and
the working population, what is the point of this 4.2% figure or
whatever the figure comes out tobe that they release every
month? Yeah.
I mean, I think the first thing to remember is that statistics
are not facts. Facts are very stubborn, but
(07:58):
statistics are pliable. The statistics are just numbers.
They're not magical, they're notreligious.
They're always debated because there's always different ways to
collect those numbers and different ways to interpret
those numbers. So in that sense, it is
political. But I don't think it's political
in a partisan sense. Like the way that the Democrats
are presenting it right now, like, oh, Trump is, you know, so
(08:19):
upset with these numbers. I think there's not actually a
divide on this question in termsof Democrats and Republicans.
Both of these parties have been in power over the last several
decades. They've been responsible for
overseeing the dismantling of social programs, the decimation
of the unions, rich getting richer, the question of of wages
(08:39):
being stagnated. None of these statistics
actually measure inequality or the wealth gap.
They don't calculate the real standard of living.
It's of course important for people to have jobs, but so is
healthcare, so is a social safety net.
It's of course important to measure the rate of change of
(09:01):
prices because people are dealing with an economy where
they can't afford anything. People just don't have the
money. That's why people feel like
we're in a recession. So when they measure it the way
they do, what are they measuring?
What good does this number do for government officials and
bureaucrats? I think that it's not a very
(09:21):
effective measure at all, but the the main reason why it
matters at all, it matters to employers and business owners
and it matters to the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve will use those numbers basically to
determine if we're in a recession, if they should adjust
interest rates up or down. An interest rate hike or an
(09:43):
interest rate reduction is goingto either increase or lower the
cost of borrowing. So that's the cost of mortgages,
your credit cards, your auto loans, things like that.
And what the BLS says about the economy.
Then the Federal Reserve says, oh, this is how we're
interpreting where the economy is going to go.
(10:04):
And whatever they say then movesthe markets.
So basically, it's just a usefultool for companies trying to
project customer demand, plan future hiring or speculate about
where they should put their investment, but it doesn't
actually mean that they're goingto give people any more benefits
(10:24):
or protections for what they're dealing with in their life.
Yeah. So the the number has a lot more
meaning to business owners and people who are involved in the
markets and the government than it actually means to people.
And I think you mentioned wealthinequality before.
And it's really frustrating for working class people like me to
(10:45):
hear that the economy is doing great and that the numbers are
up in the stock market. And I don't feel like any of
those numbers reflect my life. So is there any other
institutions who are measuring this in a different way and kind
of taking into account more variables and looking at it in a
different broader way? There's there is one measure
(11:06):
that the BLS uses that's a different figure.
It's not talked about very much.It's usually about twice as much
as the unemployment figure, but I still think it's pretty
inadequate. The main figure that I look at
is what's called functional unemployment.
So basically, functional unemployment means that you have
(11:28):
no job, or you work fewer than 35 hours a week, but you want
full time employment. So it's trying to include some
of those people who are underemployed, like you were
saying. Exactly.
Or it's also including people who make less than $25,000 a
year. Which is, which is.
Extremely. Low.
Does that kind of align with thefederal minimum wage?
Because I know that's, I think around 7 something right now.
(11:52):
Yeah. And I think that's the point is
that no one can survive off of that.
And so functional unemployment, this is a measure that's
actually by an organization that's run by Jean Ludwig.
It's called the Ludwig Institutefor Shared Economic Prosperity.
Their calculation, and they do alot of statistical analysis
called the true rate of unemployment.
And when they calculate this, it's like 6 times higher.
(12:16):
Wow. Then the the official BLS
numbers, So right now and it's been this way for a couple
months actually right now it's Aat around almost 25%.
And you said earlier the government says 4.2%.
Yes, so. 25 versus 4.2, yes. And of course it that and then
it is really different for, you know, Black people and Latino
(12:39):
people because it's always higher.
The bottom line with that measure and why I think it's
more of a useful metric is because it incorporates people
who don't have steady work and they don't earn living wages.
Because why does it matter if you're considered employed if
you can't pay for housing or food?
Yeah, exactly 1 of. The points that you made earlier
(13:02):
is that statistics are just numbers.
They're pliable. They can prove anything.
Or is that Great American cultural icon Homer Simpson once
put it? People can come up with
statistics to prove anything. 40% of all people know that, so
I think I have. Another funny one.
Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive.
(13:25):
What they conceal is also prettyimportant.
That's. Pretty good.
But you know, it's very hard to go against a philosopher like
Homer Simpson. Exactly.
Yeah. So.
OK, so let's move away from statistics for a minute.
We'll come back to them, but I just want to move away from them
for a minute. And I think it might be useful
to talk a little bit about what are the actual conditions of
(13:47):
working people in this country. Because from everything I know
from personal experience, you know, every time I go to the
grocery store, I feel like goingon a riot because I, I see the
prices of the things that I buy week in and week out.
Just keep going up and up and upto, to everything you see in the
data. It tells you the lives of
(14:07):
working people in what is supposed to be the richest
country on earth are increasingly getting worse and
worse. What are the conditions that
working people face in this country?
Let's begin with wages. What have wages been like over
the last 40-50 years? Have they have they grown with
inflation? Have they remained steady?
(14:28):
Have they declined? Yeah.
And that's The thing is that real wages, you have to look at
real wages because they measure the amount of money you make
adjusted for the amount that youpay for things.
Those have not changed in decades.
They haven't gone up since the 1970s.
When people are talking about, oh, you can't make ends meet,
(14:49):
what is the solution that they usually give you?
Go get. A job.
Get a second job. Go get a second job.
Go get a second job. Yeah.
So get a. Go find a hustle.
So get multiple streams of income because one income
doesn't cut it anymore, which iswhy you have teachers driving
Ubers or get a higher paid job, which is like with what army,
(15:11):
right? So I think that's really
important to look at. Also look at the job market
right now. If you get laid off from a job,
you're looking at a extremely competitive job market where you
can't really find work for years.
How long do unemployment benefits last on average?
(15:34):
Usually up to 26 weeks. So what do you do in that time
period when you're looking for work and you can't collect
unemployment benefits? How do you how do you survive?
So I think that's. One of the reasons people do
turn towards the gig economy because it's just easy work to
get, but can you talk a little bit more about what it's like to
(15:56):
work for DoorDash or Uber or oneof those other companies and how
it's less adequate than working for a traditional employer?
I won't go into all the details,but there's a really good
episode by John Oliver on the gig economy and their
conditions. But basically, when you're a gig
worker, you're considered an independent contractor, right?
(16:17):
You work for an online app, you're employed on a task or
project basis. And it's not just Lyft, Uber,
DoorDash, delivery people. It's also Task Rabbit and
editorial and design folks. You have to pay for all your own
materials. You have to pay for your gas,
for your car, for your computer,for your supplies.
Also, if you don't have work andyou're a gig worker, you can't
(16:41):
collect unemployment benefits. You're not eligible.
So if you work for Uber for fivemonths or a year, whatever, and
you stop working for Uber, you can't qualify for unemployment.
You don't. Qualify for unemployment because
you're classified as an independent contractor.
It's a it's a misnomer right, but it's presented as you're
self-employed. You also during that time when
you're a gig worker, you also don't get benefits.
(17:04):
You don't get health insurance or paid time off or retirement
plans. Gig work has exploded over the
last 10 years. Obviously people think about it
in terms of exponential growth since COVID, but even before
that. And it's this trend of these
temporary kind of on demand jobs.
It's the same thing with contractor or freelancer
positions. Freelancers are going to take
(17:26):
over the the job market. And when you're a freelancer,
yeah, you get your own clients, you got flexibility, etcetera,
etcetera. But you have to pay for all your
benefits out of pocket. And we know how expensive that
is. Basically, if you don't get
work, you don't get work. If you're a contractor, it's
temporary, it's only for a specific period of time.
So there's no stability or security.
(17:48):
One of the. Examples that I remember from a
few years ago that I think is still a very much a living
example that ties into these contract workers are supposedly
self-employed workers is port truckers in the Bay Area and
other ports where they have to pay to buy their own trucks or
finance their own trucks. And the cost of insurance, the
(18:09):
cost of the gas, everything. They're they're considered
independent contractors. They are workers on the docks.
They bring in goods and then they take away goods.
But they're not treated as such.And it's clearly a money saving
scheme by the bosses to lower labor costs.
Yeah. I I do think that the Port
(18:30):
Trekkers are a good example. I think basically what you're
just looking at is it the trajectory of decline in
unionization, the wage stagnation that we talked about
before, prices going up. People are a lot more dependent
on credit. Yeah, I.
Speaking of debt, I know so manypeople with student debt who
just kind of gave up on paying. They just had to choose between
(18:52):
being able to live and pay off their student debt and now
they've destroyed their credit score.
And that has all sorts of implications when it comes to
getting a house or a car or borrowing money.
So, yeah, this is all just very depressing to me.
Yes. Student debt is a perfect
example because you're actually paying for education.
You you become an indentured servant to this debt where you
(19:14):
have to pay exorbitant interest for taking out money to get an
education that doesn't really get you anywhere.
So before maybe you would get a degree hoping that that degree
would land you a high paying job.
That's not the case anymore, yeah.
Well, most people I know who have degrees have jobs that are
(19:37):
considered above average. But even with their above
average salary, it's not like they're living lives of luxury.
They kind of have to choose between taking an annual
vacation or being able to have any savings.
And yeah, I just feel like it's very The situation for the
middle class in America right now is very desperate.
Yeah. Part of it is the capitalist
(19:57):
boom bust cycle. You're always going to have wage
exploitation under capitalism. But things have just gotten so
much worse. I think a perfect example is the
amount of debt that people are facing for basic things like
education, but also relying on debt for groceries.
Yeah, just to. Live people who have children.
It's kind of impossible, yeah. And you have these predatory
(20:22):
banks and Finserv companies, right?
Financial services companies trying to capitalize on people's
despair and economic scarcity byoffering buy now, pay later
plans for for for take out. Yeah.
Well, one of the things with thejob market on the mid low end of
(20:44):
it and the question of college degrees that I think is really
interesting is you have a lot ofjobs that in the past did not
require a college degree. A lot of these are office jobs,
did not require a college degreeto get, and in the present
require at least a bachelor's degree.
But that bachelor's degree may land you at such a massive
(21:07):
student debt. And the job that you now use
your bachelor's degree to get isn't going to cover that kind
of student debt. So you're kind of damned if you
do and damned if you don't. If you don't get the degree and
don't acquire the student debt, you can't get the job that a
couple of decades ago you might have been able to get.
And if you do get the degree andthen our burden with that debt,
(21:30):
that kind of job isn't going to be able to pay off that debt and
you're stuck with it for decadesor the rest of your life.
It's. So vicious.
I always think about how stark it is in terms of generational
differences. Like you have this younger
generation that's dealing with this 10s of thousands of dollars
in student debt. And so they're bound to that.
(21:51):
They can't afford anything else.How are they going to afford to
take out a mortgage on a home? How are they going to afford
ever in their lives home ownership?
It seems completely a utopic pipe dream to be able to do
that. And what is the next generation
going to look like? I have to talk about AI, of
course, because we're talking about the job market because
(22:13):
right now things feel very dire.There's a reason why people are
terrified of AI and that's because by 2030, so that's in
five years, 30% of U.S. jobs could be automated.
That's the the prediction and 60% significantly altered by AI
(22:34):
tools. So that's just five years,
that's how quickly it's advancing in 20 years by twenty,
4550% of jobs that exist right now could be potentially fully
automated. We're all.
Going to be homeless and out of a job guys I don't know where
the. AI statistics are going to go in
the future. Exactly.
And I don't know that anybody knows for sure.
(22:56):
I mean, they're making these projections and possibilities,
and it's very possible. But one thing I do know is with
the history of capitalism, with every technological leap, on the
one hand you get these amazing technological advances.
On the other hand, they come at the expense of working people.
You know, there's a thought experiment you could do.
If you have 500 workers doing a job and you have a machine that
(23:18):
does the work of these 500 or 450 of those workers, you would
think in a rational world those 450 workers could maybe enjoy
life a bit more because they don't have to suffer as much and
do as much work, or the work could be spread around.
But under capitalism, what it means is they become pauperized,
they become poor, they become basically beggars for everyday
(23:41):
necessities. And I think when you mentioned
the next generation and what they're going to face, I think
what you're talking about is a declining American empire unable
to sustain conditions of life like it was able to sustain in
the past. And it's just going to keep
getting worse. I don't know how else to look at
it. Yeah, I think that.
(24:02):
Declining empire is a key part of this, that this very small
percent of people at the top have offloaded the cost of this
declining empire onto people. And so the working class has to
absorb all of it. That's why the very small
percentage of people at the top,the capitalist owners and the
investors, are making a killing.They're managing very well.
(24:25):
And it's also why talking about generational questions, how are
you actually going to be able ifyou're not in that tiny, tiny
minuscule top percent that like owns the stocks and bonds or
whatever, how are you actually going to have enough savings to
retire? And especially since like.
(24:45):
I'm like personally so worried about that.
I know that Social Security is pretty meager from my own
knowledge and experience, if it's even there by the.
Time, yeah. And I know that I'm not the only
person living paycheck to paycheck in the millennial
generation. And I just don't see how this is
not going to be a massive crisiswhen you know the latter end of
(25:07):
Gen. X Millennials and Gen.
Z start retiring and just don't have any savings at all to live
off of, I'm of the opinion. That the ruling class in this
country thinks the population isliving too long.
Kill them off early. Oh my.
God are you? Are you?
Suggesting we're going to they're going to start murdering
us. No.
Well. Yes, in a way.
In a way it's a you wait till you die.
(25:29):
It's a slow death. Yeah, it's the slow.
Death of working until you die. My current job right now,
there's somebody that we were dealing with that was having a
hard time understanding what we were trying to ask them to do.
And so then I finally reached out to someone else in the in
that office and I said, why? What am I doing wrong?
(25:50):
How am I, how can I explain thisbetter to this person?
Now this person is a contracted out worker.
They're not part of the company where I work.
That contracted out worker is a 94 year old woman, 94.
I swear. Is a 94 year old woman?
What the hell is a 94 year old woman doing working that's so
(26:12):
depressing. That's yeah, they will kill us.
Early. And they will kill us early by
working us to death. I mean, I'll give you a very
simple expression of what we allmean by that.
Here's a New York Times headlinefrom from April of this year.
To escape the grind, young people turn to mini retirements.
And I remember seeing that headline and going, what the
(26:34):
Hell's a mini retirement? You know what I mean?
A retirement is it's a vacation.That's what they're calling
somebody going on vacation, a mini retirement.
How do you even have What is to go on?
A vacation? Well, let's say.
We'll never afford a real. Let's say that.
Yeah. Let's say you.
Can't afford to go on vacation, But you're not supposed to do
(26:55):
that. You're supposed to work and work
and work and work and then drop dead.
That's why you have a 94 year old woman still working.
And that's why you you walk intoa Walmart, you see the so-called
greeters who are really old people shouldn't be working.
You should be enjoying the twilight of their years.
This country is obscene. And yeah, I do think the
American ruling class thinks theAmerican populace as a whole is
(27:17):
living too long and would ratherus die early so then they don't
have to worry about things like retirement.
So something I've been. Seeing online is a trend of
young people moving out of the United States because the
standard of living is better at other places.
I've been seeing a lot of videoson TikTok of people moving to
China and it's just wildly different.
(27:40):
The cities are more modern, they're cleaner, and the way the
government works is very different.
So one of the things I saw is that some companies actually
subsidized people's housing. So you pay maybe 500 U.S.
dollars for a three bedroom apartment in a modern city and
your company pays half of it. And of course the salaries are
(28:02):
lower there. But a lot of people are digital
nomads and they're kind of taking their U.S. dollars with
them other places. And yeah, I feel like the
desperation has people kind of looking elsewhere, especially
also retirees trying to make their dollars go farther in
places like Vietnam and the Philippines.
And we mentioned wage stagnationearlier.
(28:22):
One of my favorite things to do to quell my anger is to mess
around with the USA vax.org inflation calculator.
And $15,000 now is equal to $109,000 in 1972.
So when your parents shame you for all of your bad financial
choices, think about how their minimum wage job is probably
(28:44):
equal to $80,000. Yeah, and I I want.
To talk about that too, because it ties in with how statistics
are so misleading. So besides the unemployment
rate, which is completely messedup, the inflation rate is also
totally misunderstood and deceiving.
So when you hear people talk about how inflation is going
down, right? You've heard that.
(29:04):
So it was like after COVID, thatwas really, really high
inflation. They say inflation is going
down, but it's at the rate of inflation that is going down
South. That's year over year.
It's an annual rate. So if inflation.
Goes down and milk is $5. It's not like milk is going to
be 450 exactly. Exactly.
That's the point is that prices are not going down at all.
(29:27):
There's there's so much wrong with this besides the fact that
what you're saying is correct. The the cat is out of the bag,
right? Those prices are there, they're
there to stay, and they're just going to keep getting higher,
just maybe at a lower rate. But also the way that inflation
is measured, it's this quote UN quote, basket of goods, which is
all clumped together. And so certain things are going
(29:50):
to be more expensive than others.
And then depending on who you are in your economic situation
and your family situation and where you live, your personal
inflation rate could be very different.
So if you have a family of four and you live in a urban city and
you have a car, so you're payingfor gas and you have a home, so
(30:12):
you're paying for electricity and groceries, your inflation,
your personal inflation rate is going to be a lot higher than if
you're a single person living inthe mountains.
So the inflation rate for everyone is fundamentally
different, but also prices are just not going down.
Also, corporations are always juicing their profit margins.
(30:35):
The cost of business is going down and they don't hide that.
Like CE OS are always boasting about their profits and at the
same time they boast about theirability to raise prices on
consumers. So there's a ton of price
gouging going on where we can betold anything like, oh, well,
it's just inflation. Or right now we're being told,
(30:56):
well, it's tariffs that are raising the cost of things, but
it could be anything. We just have to eat it.
We don't have a choice. Well, I remember around.
COVID it was being blamed on thefact that a lot of Americans
supply chain. No.
No, no. Well, yeah, the supply chain,
but also that a lot of Americansgot, what was it a measly 1600
dollars or two grand total checks.
(31:18):
Oh, the stimulus, the stimulus, right.
And that somehow that is the reason, because you Americans
got a little bit of money. Meanwhile, that's what Israel
gets in an hour. A minute, actually.
Yeah, because we. Deigned to send you something.
It has now driven inflation to such a rate that that money is
(31:38):
worthless now. That's totally true, because
they did. Talk about that as one of the
quote, UN quote, reasons for thehigh inflation rate was that
there was too much money being circulated in the economy when
they've actually done studies that show that people took those
measly stimulus checks and they used it, they put it into
savings or that they paid off debt.
Exactly, Exactly. Yeah.
(31:59):
They weren't they weren't going around living off the hog on No,
they were like they got I'm. Drowning a little bit less,
yeah. Scene.
OK, we've been talking about theconditions and what people in
this country as a generality face.
But I think one of the things weshould touch on is that as you
move into particular sectors of the population, conditions
(32:23):
become more acute. I'm thinking of farm workers,
the mostly immigrant and undocumented farm workers who
work in California's Central Valley and other farm lands.
I'm also thinking of the perennial last hired, first
fired populace of America, the black population and in in all
(32:44):
of these metrics and even if youjust take the statistics that do
get released, populations like these go far below what is the
average. And the conditions that we are
all suffering, including white workers are expressed so much
more starkly for, for example, the black populace in America.
(33:07):
Yeah, I would say that the. Situation is definitely more
acute for black people in this country.
The unemployment rate has alwaysbeen roughly double that of
whites for several decades. And then there's also all the
stuff that's wrapped up into thejob market, employment
discrimination, the criminalization of black youth.
(33:28):
Ezra, you mentioned the last hired, first fired in terms of
where they stand in the job market and the deep seated
oppression within the job market.
Also, I think in terms of women,women are facing a lot more
responsibility in terms of beingthe primary caregivers and
families. Even though they have entered
(33:50):
the workforce a lot more, they've actually left the labor
force. I think the figures are in the
first half of 2025 / 200,000 women ages 20 or over have left
the labor force entirely. Well, I mean when childcare.
Is as expensive as it is. That totally makes sense, yeah.
(34:10):
How do you balance? Work and family and how do you
do it financially right, but that raises.
A whole other thing which is a single income household let's
say that these women are living with somebody who's working the
ability of a single income household in this country to
sustain a family is incredibly difficult a lot of the people I
(34:34):
know who who. Have kids, actually have a lot
of debt? Yeah.
And also if you're a stay at. Home caregiver, you are not
considered part of the labor force, so you're kind of like
opted out of the. Labor force technically,
regardless of whether. It's your choice or not, but the
point is, is for those statistics, going back to those
(34:54):
statistics, the unemployment numbers, that unemployment
figure of you're out of a job, you're able to work and you've
been looking for the last four weeks.
That only applies to people who are considered part of the labor
force. The labor force is not the
entire population. The labor force is like 60% of
the population, you know, hearing.
How this number is kind of bullshit is helpful for me
(35:18):
because the number 4.2 does not represent the reality that I see
in the job market. Yeah.
And I think that's the. Problem if you have millions of
people missing from the workforce and the unemployment
rate is being artificially depressed and it gets used.
By the rulers for their particular purposes, which are
usually to attack the bigger benefits that the population
(35:40):
gets. Totally.
One of the things I you notice as a pattern, as if the
unemployment figures and similarsuch metrics come out with
numbers that the political establishment consider to be
favorable. What they will do is say, well,
things are going so well, we need to cut entitlements.
What they call entitlements. The meager benefits that people
get if the numbers come out and they're not very good, then they
(36:03):
will say, well, we need to cut entitlements because we can't
afford to keep spending like that.
The country's going into debt either way they they come at it.
It's being used as a cudgel to go after the small amount of
benefits that this country givesout to the population, which are
historically the result of massive struggles by working
people in this country. What you said about entitlements
(36:24):
is. Totally true, because even just
that word that's used, entitlements, which is used to
demonize and villainize people who are struggling, and it's
totally tied to this idea that poor people are completely
undeserving. Rich people like Elon Musk are
totally deserving. They can get as many bailouts as
they want. They get all their entitlements.
They're never demonized. Yeah, the fact that Elon Musk
(36:47):
get. Tax breaks.
It makes me insane. This country really believes
that. If you are wealthy and have
quote UN quote made it, it meansyou're good.
And if you are poor and impoverished, it means you're
bad. Yeah, you are to blame for your
own lot. Yeah, this country.
Criminalizes poverty. Yeah.
And what you were saying before.About how companies use what's
(37:10):
happening in the economy as an excuse.
I can't even tell you how often I hear the term economic
headwinds. What does that even mean?
Economic to to a normal human being it means that.
The business is not it's, it doesn't mean anything because
(37:32):
corporate profits are still breaking records.
So I can't even say that it means anything.
It literally means we might not get as many profits as we
projected, so we're going to have to cut.
Your wages in advance benefits. Or job.
In advance exactly and. What's really messed up, of
course, is that then it becomes this race to the bottom.
(37:57):
You have unionization rights that have plummeted.
You have fewer protections, fewer pensions, like who gets a
pension anymore. So that's interesting.
And I'm like to use it to pivot a little bit to statistics, but
ones that I think might actuallybe indicative.
Sorry, Sir, Lies. Damn lies and statistics.
(38:19):
As Mark Twain said, let's see the lies.
And the damn lies and the statistics here.
One of the things that's interesting when you talk about
previous generations, what people harken back to when
America was supposedly great in the 1950s and 60s, is you had a
much higher unionization rate that resulted in higher wages
and benefits for working people.But the anchor of that
(38:42):
unionization, and indeed the anchor of the whole economy, was
manufacturing. That was where the American
economy was strong. And partly it had to do with the
fact, which we're not going to get into here, but it had to do
the fact that after the Second World War, the US was basically
the only economy left standing among the big advanced
(39:02):
capitalist countries. But so this is interesting.
In 1960, if you look at the approximate share of the gross
domestic product or gross national products, they called
it the time. The number one part of the share
was manufacturing. That doesn't include service or
anything. And it accounted for 28%.
If you go down to what was then #4 they had a category called
(39:26):
finance, insurance and real estate.
But sometimes it's, it's abbreviated as FIRE and it's
what you can call trading in fictitious capital, stocks,
bonds, investments, those kinds of things that accounted in
nineteen, 6413%, so 28%. And then #4 at 13%, what I'll
(39:47):
call rentier capitalism. Fast forward to this year, 2025
GDP breakdown number one at 21 percent is rentier.
Capitalism is fire, finance, insurance and real estate, and
#5 is manufacturing at 11 percent.
The pain that working people arefeeling isn't just because a job
(40:12):
is paying less money, it's because the jobs that are
available are shit jobs. What used to be good, decent
paying manufacturing jobs are disappearing and have
disappeared and have long been disappearing.
And what it you instead get is abunch of capitalist making a
ridiculous amount of money trading in investments and the
(40:35):
like, and basically these service industry jobs that are,
you know, as an old friend of ofours like to call Mick jobs and
workers are feeling the pain of that.
And it's also translated into the destruction of these massive
manufacturing unions. So first of all.
Manufacturing jobs are not coming back.
(40:57):
No. Second of all, they left because
the capitalist class found cheaper sources of Labor abroad.
Yep. Not that we have to get into all
the insurance and outs of it, but you have this sort of circus
show happening in this country since Trump took office of
tariffs, tariffs on this country.
(41:17):
Then the tariffs get suspended and they come back and they get
suspended. And there's supposed reason for
that is you're going to put those tariffs on because they're
going to somehow bring jobs backto America, and manufacturing
jobs specifically, they're not. But the way it gets talked
about, whether it's by Trump or by others, including Democrats,
is that the loss of manufacturing jobs is something
(41:38):
that happened to America. Oh, poor America had suffered
this. No, it was done to America by
American capitalist for the reason that you laid out,
because they saw that manufacturing was cheaper abroad
and went for that. But for another reason as well.
When you started getting in the 1960s, W European and Japanese
(41:58):
capitalist, having recovered from the Second World War,
competing with the US, American capitalist made a decision that
it is far cheaper to not engage in that direct competition and
instead engage in speculation asa way to bring in massive
profits. As opposed to having to, for
example, reinvest in all your factories and bring them up to
(42:20):
speed so they can compete with Japanese capitals.
Just let them go ship off the manufacturing somewhere else and
we're going to make our money inspeculation.
And you know what? They were right for them.
The rest of the country went to hell, but they've made massive
profits and they're going to continue to do it.
That's why it's never coming back.
So the guillotines come up. Guillotine.
(42:43):
Guillotine. Do we pronounce it guillotine
or? Guillotine.
We pronounce it the American. Way guillotine.
You know, and we're talking a lot about.
Manufacturing and obviously thatwas a really huge portion of the
American workforce. And then I think after that, one
(43:03):
of our biggest industries was tech.
And now with AI coming, we're already seeing huge layoffs in
that industry. So the future seems very, very
uncertain. And like you said, manufacturing
is certainly not coming back. We just don't have the
infrastructure or even the will,as you guys say also.
That's very relevant. This is drifting a little bit,
but into the AI point is that all these companies invested A
(43:27):
tremendous amount in AII, think it was like 30 or 40 billion
into Gen. AI and they have gotten 0
returns. 95% of. Organizations that invested
heavily in AI have gotten no returns for their investment
whatsoever, which is why I'm a little.
Bit dubious about whether really30 or 50%, yeah, that's when
(43:51):
that 20. 40 number or whatever it is you're by 20-30 are going.
To be taken by AII mean it's possible.
This technology is young, it's growing, but it hasn't really
reached that level of maturity yet.
Yet, but it is growing fast. And also, regardless of where it
goes or what the numbers are, the people on the bottom are
(44:14):
going to pay the price absolutely.
And the people at the. TOP are going to do everything
in their power to make sure thathappens.
It's just a further further. Concentration of wealth, Yeah, I
was just thinking. You know, having used Homer
Simpson earlier as a paragon of of American culture and
philosophy, I always think it's interesting that when The
Simpsons first aired, it was I think 1989.
(44:37):
The character was Homer Simpson at a dead end job.
Marge Simpson as a stay at home mom.
Literally it's the standard American family from the 1950s.
Two and a half kids, Bart, Lisa and the half kid being Maggie.
They had a cat and a dog and they lived in a house, 2 cars,
everything. I mean, the dog was pretty
skinny. The dog was pretty skinny.
(44:59):
You're right, the dog was prettyskinny and it was always about
how they were having a hard timemaking ends meet.
But you have to always remember it was a one income household.
And when it came out in 1989, I would say it was still kind of
believable, but, but on the cuspof it not being believable, you
know, I, I, I don't know if I would.
(45:19):
Classify it as a dead end job, though.
He worked at a nuclear power plant and he was an idiot.
But that I think was a part of it.
Is that like anybody, no collegedegree could have this job.
So I had epitomized that, I think exactly, exactly and at
one point. There was one one episode where,
Oh my God, Homer's gone, how arewe going to replace him?
And it was just a, a stick hanging on a, a brick hanging on
(45:40):
a stick. And that basically did Homer's
job for a week while he was gone.
But it was believable. I think in 1989 was at that very
cusp where you could have a one income household like that and
it didn't strain credulity too much.
I think if that show were to launch today and you have that
(46:02):
setting, it would no one would even believe.
It would just be impossible to even conceive A to have that
setting today. Well, none of us are.
Doing as good as Homer, that's for sure.
That's for sure. So what's the?
Retirement plan. Guys, I don't know the.
Apocalypse is my. Retirement plan, I think that's
(46:22):
all of our retirement. Plan at this point, but.
We don't love anybody who doesn't love us.
Thanks for listening to Unwashed.
And Unruly because we can't afford anything except a little
bit of truth. Please follow us on Spotify,
Apple Podcast, Google, or wherever you find us.
(46:43):
Make sure to rate and review andsend us your thoughts to
unwashedunruly@gmail.com.
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