• VikingHippie@lemmy.wtf
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    1 year ago

    GDP is up 5% and unemployment is like 3-4%.

    GDP measures the market value of all goods and services to the rich people who it all. It doesn’t take inflation and cost of living expenses such as the skyrocketing rents into account. It’s a measure of how well the top 10-15% are doing, not regular workers.

    Likewise, the official unemployment statistics count critically underemployed and underpaid people and people who work without getting paid as equally employed as someone collecting great pay and benefits for doing their dream job. Most of the jobs added from some time during the late aughts to now have been low-paying part time jobs with no health insurance that are literally the next worst thing to unemployment.

    What I’m getting isn’t that any of this is necessarily Biden’s fault. My point is that both are poor measures of how well things are going for regular people and in fact things are just as bad as they were before and right after the height of the pandemic. In some ways even worse.