When I first read your comment I thought you meant “all minors”. It looks as if this is for “working age population”, which means ages 15 to 64.
“The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development defines the employment rate as the employment-to-population ratio. This is a statistical ratio that measures the proportion of the country's working age population (statistics are often given for ages 15 to 64) that is employed.”
Exactly. I can't understand why people don't just say the thing it is, especially a thing that's already bad. Wording it like this feels very dishonest / clickbaity.
Well, 47.2% of the U.S. population does not have a job, and the headline was "Almost half of the U.S. population does not have a job" - what are you objecting to?
(Note: that is the headline of the Axios article - I don't know what the old headline of the HN submission was.)
This does not mean that the unemployment rate is 52.8% - and that is not what the headline claims.
FWIW, all the main indicators show a massive spike:
1. It gives an idea of how many people are being supported by means outside of regular employment. In most cases this will have some form of impact on the economy.
2. Other job figures are misleading in different ways. Job creation numbers are irrelevant unless you know how many people are seeking work. Unemployment numbers only consider the number of people actively looking for work, ignoring those who are able and willing to work but are unable to seek employment.
pre-covid, it was 61%, so we're down 10 points in 6 months.
Yikes.