NationStates Jolt Archive

Not sure if this is where a comment of this nature should go...

But has anybody else noticed that the Thirdgeek NSEconomy stats have become oddly skewed in their Unemployment rate calculations?

Whyfor do I have a 27.11 unemployment rate as a frightening economy nation? All of my secondary nations have oddly inflated unemployment rates as well, going as high as 30.6 percent in one case (also frightening economy).

Is this... intended? Cuz it came as something of a shock to me.

Nationstates isn't accountable to third party sites. Thirdgeek has their own forums: http://terranordalis.thirdgeek.com/index.php?f=15 Try there.

Not sure if this is where a comment of this nature should go...

But has anybody else noticed that the Thirdgeek NSEconomy stats have become oddly skewed in their Unemployment rate calculations?

Whyfor do I have a 27.11 unemployment rate as a frightening economy nation? All of my secondary nations have oddly inflated unemployment rates as well, going as high as 30.6 percent in one case (also frightening economy).

Is this... intended? Cuz it came as something of a shock to me.I guess it depends on how you look at unemployment.

<Dons cap as B.A. Economics, University of Michigan...>

Current U.S. unemployment stats understate the number of unemployed and underemployed persons in America. This is done in several ways: one is by the recent change that includes military personnel in the overall base (it used to be civilian unemployment); this allows the nation to imporve its employment stats by going to war ;) . Another is by ignoring people who aren't actively looking for work (they are "willingly" idle and not unemployed). There are other tricks as well...

The point is that a very prosperous society might have a much lower percentage of its citizens gainfully employed in market-related or commercial activities. Think about it: do women in your society stay home and raise their kids? Then, in a way, they're unemployed. That doesn't make this a bad thing - it's a conscious choice, that's all.

Early retirement? Kids who could work choosing not to? Students (including older people going back to get masters degrees and doctorates)? All of these people might be "unemployed" (or might not, depending on how you look at things).

Only you can decide what a 25-30% unemployment rate means in the context of your frightening(ly good) economies. Does it mean that things are so good that people are just kicking back and taking it easy? Liesure is desireable, so high unemployment could be a "product" (and a felicitous one at that!) of your economy.

Alternately, it could signify an economy where industrialization has gone so far that a significant percentage of the populace can't compete. You don't hire people to mop floors or clean toilets because you have janitorbots or self-cleaning toilets, or whatever. Maybe that 25-30% are simply people who have no economically valuable skill; there are no jobs they can hold. This "permanent underclass" might seem at first blush to be a waste, but maybe the cost to your society of training them is greater than the cost of simply ignoring them.

If there's a number that I'd like to see in NSEconomy or other calculators, it would be a nation's "GINI coefficient". This is a number between 0 and 1 that expresses the degree of income inequality within society (where "1" is total inequality - the Beloved Leader owns everything - and "0" is an egalitarian utopia [everyone has exactly the same thing]). By looking at a nation's GINI coefficient, I could see at a glance whether it was likely that 25-30% unemployment was an expression of the desire for liesure or a consequence of a policy of throwing people onto the garbage heap.

Godular is - in my centrist eyes - very much a ... ahem ... Centrally Planned Economy (this is the RLUN term used to describe Communist states, but it could cover any ideology that uses the same M.O. - namely, taking everything from the citizenry and using it however it sees fit). Take a look at the Consumption figure ($4,411,683,640,000.00). This means that while Godularians (?) have a per capita GDP of $22,967.31, they actually only have an average of $4,138.54 apiece to spend as they see fit.

So one clue to this society's preferences is its Government Budget. Godular spends almost nothing on Social Welfare or Social Equality. This could mean that its leaders don't care about the poor and downtrodden, which might suggest that the bulk of those unemployed millions are simply left to starve. There could be other explanations, of course - but the spotlight page suggests that corporations run Godular (or at least have a strong say in its policy), which suggests to me that a few powerful Godularians make a ton of money (most of which goes to the government) while many make next to nothing and a signifcant minority are "social surplus".

Here's where the GINI coefficient would come in. If Godular had a GINI coefficent of, say .58, then it would not be unreasonable to suppose that Godularian society, broken into quartiles, looks like this:
Lowest 25% - $0 Income
Next Lowest 25% - 5% of Average ($1,148.37)
Next Highest 25% - 15% of Average ($3,445.10)
Top 25% - 380% of Average ($87,275.78)
After taxes, this would be:
Lowest 25% - $0
Next Lowest 25% - $160.77
Next Highest 25% - $482.32
Top 25% - $12,218.61
But again, this is just one possiblity...

By comparison, my nation (Allemande) is a Western European industrial democracy. Taxes are high (at 51%), although the Government is looking for ways to reduce them. About one-sixth of Government spending is on Social Welfare (vs. none for Social Equality), which implies that the Government provides a "social safety net" but does not attempt to redistribute income.

In societies of this nature, a typical GINI coefficient would be .30. Assuming this is the case with Allemande, the income distribution curve might be:
Bottom 25% - 30% of Average ($6,396.77)
Next Lowest 25% - 60% of Average ($12,793.54)
Next Highest 25% - Average ($21,322,56)
Highest 25% - 215% of Average ($45,843.50)
The tax rate is graduated, so we can't see exactly what after-tax income is for the highest quartile, however:
Bottom 25% - > $3,132.46 (rate is below average 51%)
Next Lowest 25% - > $6,264.91 (rate is below average 51%)
Next Highest 25% - $10,448.05
Highest 25% - 215% of Average < $22,463.32 (rate is above average 51%)Unemployment is 17.92%, but was just over 8% last year. Since I decided not to intervene in the auto workers' strike, that could simply be a reflection of our current labor woes. I assume that the economy would recover. And BTW, thanks to our Social Welfare spending, most of those people are probably drawing some form of assistance or compensation...

Nor, if the labor troubles persist, that high unemployment rate could mean that there have been layoffs (true unemployment) or that people have quit to find other jobs (which might not be unemployment, if some of these workers were students, spouses providing secondary income, or if some of these people return to Allemande's well-funded educational system for job training in preparation for a career change).

I hope this helps give you are clearer idea of what the unemployment number might mean in different economies.

I was just curious as to why the unemployment rates had skyrocketed. Used to be I was never over 7% in the worst of days.

Ah well, might just ignore that little bit. Godular operates as something of a Meritocracy, trodding on the poor causes rebellion, rebellion is inefficient, rebellion is BAD. You work, you get paid, you work harder you get paid more, you work better and harder you get promoted and paid more... so on and so forth.

Kinda made me realize that I need ta shift my government policies a little, as having a dictatorship government isn't really conducive to somebody else being able to work their way up to the top in their own time. Maybe its time fer some political liberties to start popping up.

I kicked this over to Gameplay, largely because the discussion and analysis of nations is far more interesting than the technical question (which was answered).

If Allemande has the time, I'd be pretty amused to see his analysis of my nation, this sort of this interests me. Granted, the numbers we're playing with aren't official, but it does give flavor to the nation.

Of course, that 2% to Social Equality is an abberition... meh.

Edit: And here we have a difference between 3rdGeek and Sunset... Geek gives me 5.97% unemployment, Sunset gives me 2.65%. Odd...

I kicked this over to Gameplay, largely because the discussion and analysis of nations is far more interesting than the technical question (which was answered).

If Allemande has the time, I'd be pretty amused to see his analysis of my nation, this sort of this interests me. Granted, the numbers we're playing with aren't official, but it does give flavor to the nation.

Of course, that 2% to Social Equality is an abberition... meh.

Edit: And here we have a difference between 3rdGeek and Sunset... Geek gives me 5.97% unemployment, Sunset gives me 2.65%. Odd...Your unemployment is extremely low, you have no government, there's a a huge amount of spending on Education and a little on Social Equality (by the non-existant government, but we won't go there). I'm going to surmise that this is a society where there's no underclass - but then there is slavery, so by saying that "there's no underclass", what I really mean is that society has something that it can do with everyone (even if that something is unsavory or inefficient; using prisoners as "comfort workers", for instance).

Your high level of education suggests a fair degree of income equality. You could assume anything from .20 to .40 in the way of a GINI coefficient and not be unreasonable. I'd figure that the bottom quartile gets dumped on, the top quartile makes out like bandits, and the middle half is average, kind of like this (based on a GINI coefficient of .34):
Bottom 25% - 20% of Average ($9,384.90)
Next Lowest 25% - 60% of Average ($28,154.69)
Next Highest 25% - 80% of Average ($37,539.58)
Highest 25% - 240% of Average ($112,618.80)
... But this is admittedly speculation.

Edit: And here we have a difference between 3rdGeek and Sunset... Geek gives me 5.97% unemployment, Sunset gives me 2.65%. Odd...

Geek nearly always gives me a little less than 5% unemployment and Sunset has always pegged it at 15-25%. This even after I reduced taxes from 90% to 21% to shrink the black market (at first I thought the "unemployed" had unofficial employment in the black market, but it didn't turn out this way).

Edit: 2.55% today according to Geek? Damn, that's an all-time low (was 4.8% yesterday). :D