Jackson Jambalaya

Why work when the Marxists, white guilt crowd, and bleeding hearts keep giving them free stuff? Keep 'em on the plantation as they are the useful idiots who vote for Bennie, etc.

It's no surprise since we're one of the states with the highest federal dependency and have an extremely high percentage of our population on government programs. We keep allowing the government to remove incentives to work, so we shouldn't be surprised when people choose not to

That is easy to understand. More people in Mississippi are willing to let other people pay for their living expenses. The politicians in Mississippi are willing to give those people money as the money is not theirs. It is an easy way to buy votes. There are Mississippi families who do not have a living member of their family that ever worked for a living. There is no plan on that changing in the future.

Lots of slugs in MS.

10:49 makes a soberingly sad statement.
But it's true.

The work force here is abysmal.

The ones that show up are awful, and the bar is so low that showing up is all that anyone even expects.

I am a critic of excessive welfare, vote GOP, had a job since I was 13, but I am skeptical of your critical assertion: "There are MS families who do not have a living member of their family who has ever worked for a living."

Do you have linkable data or even personal stories to back that up?

Certainly the labor participation rate is always influenced by those who are not seeking employment but entire families for a generation?

Meanwhile our officials crow about our low unemployment rate and do press releases about creating jobs that are about to be eliminated by AI.

In addition to the concerns expressed above about a citizenry unmotivated to work, not specifically mentioned is that the labor participation rate includes Mississippians who have passed retirement age.

The 2020 Census detailed that Mississippians age 65 or older is the fastest growing age group and the group increased ~ +27% since 2010. (Our population aged 20-39 grew ~ +3.5% over the same time period.)

Mississippi's median age in 2000 was 33.8 years, in 2020 it was 37.7 years. Mississippi is an aging state.

Using the labor participation rate to claim that Mississippi's unemployment rate is artificially low and that our state economy is not as robust as advertised -- (as the Barksdalers are so oft to allude in their in-kind contributions to the Presley campaign) -- remains a specious and intellectually dishonest argument.

If someone wants to work and gets off their butt to look for a job, they will find one. Mississippi isn't lacking jobs.

A person used to have to move somewhere else in order to get a job. Now, they have to either get a ride to the post office or have a bank account for the direct deposit.

It’s more retirees than anything , not even Florida tops 60% in the south. Most who can survive on SS and retirement don’t want to work for the partly wages being paid. Take retirees out and Miss would be closer to 65%. Over 15% of the population is over 65.

Clearly we are all so rich that we don't need to work. Palm Beach and Martha's Vineyard have even lower workforce participation rates, so we should aim to get to their level.

I had a state economist explain it to me this way several years ago and I doubt much has changed since then...
If Mississippi could get to the national average workforce participation rate - with all new workers just making minimum wage - we would be around 45th instead of 50th on per-capita income.
If Mississippi could get to the national average workforce participation rate - with all new workers making the average income - we would be 35th-40th instead of 50th.

How is there an "unemployment rate" of 4 % ish, when only 55 percent of the residents have a job? This math doesn't math very well, what exactly is the situation of the other 51 percent of residents?

@12:38

Bless your heart.

The figures are bogus, meaningless, contrived...which means they're based on UI claims filed, meager telephone surveys, work applications filed with state agencies mixed with a ration of estimates, guestimates and a heavy portion of hoodoo with pencil-necked-geeks and people who tabulate made up data for a living massaging the formula.

Nothing about the formula is scientific or provable. Or reliable - Who among us uses such useless information?

Nobody at any agency or think- tank can determine 'number looking for work'.

In fact, it's difficult enough to determine number WORKING, which is also based, in large part, on guestimates plus number reported by State Employment Security staff (UI covered employment) and ballpark estimates which render the date bogus. Who relies on this data for business decisions is unknown.

And 12:35 is right about retirees. Mississippi touts itself as a retiree friendly state, not counting retirement income in the tax formula, which supposedly encourages retirees to retire here.

12:35 also mentions the fact that retirees don't want to work. Well, why would retirees want to work unless it's essential to make ends meet or have company sponsored insurance? The purpose of retirement is to retire, right?

Next, we will break out into focus groups and discuss the number of professional baseball players who, at one time or another, have used a 36-inch bat and gotten a walk.

Unemployment rate only accounts for people actively seeking a job.

So you can have a very low unemployment rate and a very low labor participation rate. That says that everyone looking for a job is finding one while the rest are sitting on their butts.

To answer one of the above questions, the unemployment rate doesn’t include people who aren’t looking for jobs. Put another way, the Bureau of Labor does not count an individual as unemployed if that individual is not looking for work. This brings me to a personal point about the labor participation rate: I also think it’s a number that’s easy to throw around and easy to use to justify often snarky assumptions about others when the reality of labor participation is much more complex. As others have mentioned, the rate makes the assumption that people who are retired are “able” to work and therefore should be and, if they aren’t, have caused some sort of societal problem that the government and all of its policy-expert lever pullers must rush in to fix. It also doesn’t take into account people, like me, who are of work-eligible age and choose not to work because we devote our time to the care of minor children, disabled adult children, aged or disabled parents, or perform other volunteer charitable work on a most-of-the-time basis. So the number isn’t the full story. Unfortunately many people are so shallow in their consideration of statistics they leap to policy positions and actions that, unsurprisingly, can’t adequately address a situation because they escape adequate assessment of the same situation.

Is there any topic on which y’all are not experts? And with so many experts, how are we still so f’ed up?

The entire state of Mississippi, not just these unfortunates, but the military spending, and other federal support programs, is dependent on the federal tit. We are a load on the rest of the country. But don’t worry once we get out of the last decile in education we’ll actually have better than marginally better than minimum wage jobs (cars, tires, alunimum mills). Don’t hold your breath.

Best thing that could happen is that the tit is pulled.

For 2:00 and 2:07 - Tell us how, when you worked for DOL-BLS or Employment Security, you determined the 'number looking for work'.

That number is even more impossible than the number of Non-Ag employed individuals
who are under-employed and looking to change jobs or who have dropped out and only accept cash for wages.

If you were to ask the top tier federal DOL personnel how accurate or meaningful these data are, you would be told: "It doesn't matter whether the data are accurate. As long as all 50 states are measured with the same formula, it presents a picture of nationwide relativity, one state with another".

None of these numbers is accurate and nothing can be made of the 'data' generated.

The only thing sure about these data are that the thousands of federal and state employees cranking out the data...are employed and in line for a pension. Many are even retired from one of the states and are now working for the Feds which leads us to the subject of double dipping.

This is why our state is at the bottom of so many lists. It’s our lazy citizens.

Ask anyone who works at MDA what this means and you’ll get a blank stare

Nobody in Mississippi works for a living? Really??? That’s shocking news. I thought everyone was industriously working hard to support their family and not be a burden on other working taxpayers! Just shocking…

2:00 here - I've never worked for the DOL. But I can read, and have studied, and I tried to simply explain how the two terms differ/work together. I didn't give an opinion on the accuracy of the numbers.

As for the folks questioning expertise, I didn't waste $150,000 on an education I could have gotten at a public library for $1.50 (in other words, I didn't go to Millsaps) - I read some. You should try it.

Our unemployment rate is 3.2% - lowest in State history.

Dr. Mark Horne from Laurel was on Supertalk the other day and said his hospital needed 30 nurses, in addition to openings in every other job category. Laurel is about the #15 population in the state.

Seems more people died of Covid than our federal officials are willing to admit.

@ 3:56pm Oh my, sounds like a winning campaign slogan though...

Pull that tit! Pull that tit!

Our cost of living is so low folks can get by in transfer payments. To fix this, pay people more. Unfortunately, most businesses want to come here so they can pay employees less. We stuck, y’all.

1:08 Pm, Math is not your strong suite. Did you receive your education in Mississippi?

@9:12 - Since you can read, read this! You're attempting to insult a man who spent 25 years in that system. I doubt your library education will suffice.