Jun 2, 2026 · 59 min · 13 segments
(Originally aired 7/1/2025) Newly minted college graduates are having a harder time landing that first job than in recent years. Is it AI? Is college useless? Is it a crisis? (No. No. And not yet…)…
Kathryn Anne EdwardsHostRobin RauziHostWe're talking about under, [laughs] we're talking about underemployment
What I thought we were going to talk about is how many people on the internet and elsewhere in articles look at the 4.2% unemployment statistic, and they don't feel like that is really grasping the bigger picture of what's happening with the labor market, and fairly or not, with the economy overall.
There are these other forces at work, no hiring s- or slow hiring, jobs being posted that aren't real jobs.
So they turn to some of these alternative reporting, I'm gonna call it a, a BLS remix-
... of data to say, "Actually, the real number of unemployment is this," or, "Don't look at the headline unemployment number, look at this other number," or, "Combine these three things, and you'll find out, in fact, that the elites are lying to you, the government is lying to you," or, "It's really way worse than you think it is." And I just don't know how much these, these people are just looking for a justification of what they're feeling or are they actually struggling to understand something that is happening but that just isn't reflected in the headline unemployment number.
[laughs] We should say first and foremost that if you are struggling and someone tells you the economy is fine, that sucks.
Yeah, you don't believe them, and they're basically saying either they're lying or you don't matter.
I think that the same way any sort of social thing f- filters through to your personal experience, whether it's addiction, suicide, you know? But joblessness is the same thing, that you may not be jobless, but you feel the joblessness of people around you.
And it, that's tough because, you know, I can say with certainty the unemployment rate is not wrong.
And it is one of the paramount indicators of how well our economy is doing.
But at no point in our economy is the unemployment rate a prediction that everybody's doing well.
We're talking about under, [laughs] we're talking about underemployment
What I thought we were going to talk about is how many people on the internet and elsewhere in articles look at the 4.2% unemployment statistic, and they don't feel like that is really grasping the bigger picture of what's happening with the labor market, and fairly or not, with the economy overall.
There are these other forces at work, no hiring s- or slow hiring, jobs being posted that aren't real jobs.
So they turn to some of these alternative reporting, I'm gonna call it a, a BLS remix-
... of data to say, "Actually, the real number of unemployment is this," or, "Don't look at the headline unemployment number, look at this other number," or, "Combine these three things, and you'll find out, in fact, that the elites are lying to you, the government is lying to you," or, "It's really way worse than you think it is." And I just don't know how much these, these people are just looking for a justification of what they're feeling or are they actually struggling to understand something that is happening but that just isn't reflected in the headline unemployment number.
[laughs] We should say first and foremost that if you are struggling and someone tells you the economy is fine, that sucks.
Yeah, you don't believe them, and they're basically saying either they're lying or you don't matter.
I think that the same way any sort of social thing f- filters through to your personal experience, whether it's addiction, suicide, you know? But joblessness is the same thing, that you may not be jobless, but you feel the joblessness of people around you.
And it, that's tough because, you know, I can say with certainty the unemployment rate is not wrong.
And it is one of the paramount indicators of how well our economy is doing.
But at no point in our economy is the unemployment rate a prediction that everybody's doing well.
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