For all practical purposes, all university students should always show up as "unemployed" in any statistics, because they are -- and they'll need to earn all of that cash back and then some extra, at some point in their lifetime.
Your definition differs from the one used in the article "A person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a living wage — but who can't find one — is unemployed"
I expect there's value in the statistic of everyone who lacks a full time job (unemployment in the sense you mention), but a student who has reasonable prospects of employment in X years, post graduation, is significantly different than someone failing to find an adequate job right now.
So why should we not include children of all ages and retied people as well then? They are also unemployed.
The reason you don't include full time students is the same for children and retired people. They are on their way to becoming productive citizens or have done their part for society.
What about retired people who aren't really retired, they are just drawing on their pension sooner than they'd like, as a desperate alternative to employment money to lengthen their rental runway to homelessness? Or they are drawing on a pension while doing food delivery gigs on the side to top it up to pay for essentials?
I'd suggest a useful definition of "unemployed" for the purpose of evaluating if there's a problem is: "needs a job but can't get one".
That covers retired-but-not-really people, and students who need to work for a living at the same time but are between jobs. But not children, or students with enough to live on from their parents.
Many full time students are employed throughout college. As someone who attended the state colleges my family could afford, most students had part time employment and many were working full time.
If they are "funded" by their parents - why would they need to earn any of that back? Is that really how it works in the US? It's a matter of course in other countries that parents fund the education of their children.
> It's a matter of course in other countries that parents fund the education of their children.
In some countries. In others (such as Australia), students take out an interest-free loan from the government, and are expected to pay it back, with or without the help of their parents.
You can't forget the HN demographic of upper middle class white men who pay for their children's education. I'd say most young adults entering college have a loan in their name.
Cursory research [0] says
>Today, roughly 70% of American students end up taking out loans to go to college. The average graduate leaves school with around $30,000 in debt and all told, some 45 million Americans owe $1.6 trillion in student loans — and counting.
The post is titled "America's True Unemployment Rate," so it does make sense in this case to assume were talking about USA. I certainly was in my comment above.
Fair point about your comment, I'm just trying to make my point based on the original generalization I replied to: Part of it is simply wrong even for the US (see siblings), and the rest cannot stand as a generalization for the rest of the world, which "any statistics about students" doesn't account for.
Sorry, I worked through my entire undergrad as well.
I meant we should never exclude young adults from unemployment metrics. If they aren't employed at a living wage, they aren't employed, being a student should not "bypass" that metric in any way.
For all practical purposes, all university students should always show up as "unemployed" in any statistics, because they are -- and they'll need to earn all of that cash back and then some extra, at some point in their lifetime.