Optimist Economy

• Looking Beyond the Unemployment Rate

  The unemployment rate has been hovering around 4.2%. But in today’s highly unsettled economy, many people feel this headline number from the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t capture their economic struggles — from slow hiring to working two part-time jobs to recent graduates unable to find work in their fields. But as economist Kathryn Edwards points out, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics also measures underemployment (currently 7.9%) as well as discouraged workers and many other indicators of labor market slack. But there’s one thing the government probably should not measure, and that’s skills mismatch, or being “overqualified” for the job you have. In this episode, we also go way, way back to the Great Depression, when social workers and advocates for the unemployed fought to get the government to measure joblessness at all.Read more:True Rate of Unemployment [Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity July 2025]Origins of the Unemployment Rate: The Lasting Legacy of Measurement without Theory. [David Card, UC Berkeley and NBER, February 2011]THE PHILADELPHIA NEGRO A Social Study — W. E. B. DuBOISCase studies of unemployment, compiled by the Unemployment Committee of the National Federation of SettlementsTable A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization - 2025 M07 Results [U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics]Table A-11. Unemployed people by reason for unemployment - 2025 M07 Results [U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics]Table A-12. Unemployed people by duration of unemployment - 2025 M07 Results [U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics]

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• GDP Was Never Going to Make You Happy

  Gross Domestic Product is the big dog of economic numbers. But this measure of the economy’s size has massive blind spots. It ignores income inequality and citizens’ wellbeing. It rewards consumption and thus environmental degradation. Yes, it is vital to know if your economy is growing or shrinking and why. And yet maybe GDP shouldn’t be the lodestar. In fact, as economist Kathryn Edwards relays, the person who invented GDP warned us of its limitations.

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• How to Actually Help Young Men Struggling in Our Economy

  The "boys and men crisis" conversation set in motion following the 2024 election is now shooting off in erratic directions, leading to a lot of hand-wringing about college enrollment, long-gone factory jobs, and “loss of purpose.” Still, men’s workforce participation has been on a long, slow slide for seven decades, and it is reaching a worrying level. To address that, though, we need to have harder conversations about what truly affects young men disproportionately – things like substance abuse disorders, other addictions like gambling and video games, and criminal records. Support the Optimist Economy podcast by becoming a paid subscriber on Substack, or donating at https://buymeacoffee.com/optimisteconomy

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• What You Don’t Know About Poverty

  About 11% of Americans have a household income that puts them below the official government threshold for poverty. Is poverty a state of being, or a risk? Are the poor people themselves the root cause of poverty? Or are they the outcome of a low-wage labor market that churns people in and out of work? Because how you diagnose the problem matters if you’re looking for solutions. Economist Kathryn Anne Edwards tackles three major misconceptions about poverty.Support the Optimist Economy podcast by becoming a paid subscriber on Substack, or donating at https://buymeacoffee.com/optimisteconomy

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• Q&A Part 2: Working Two Jobs, Incentives vs. Handouts, the Gold Standard, and Government ROI

  Economist Kathryn Edwards is back with more answers. In Part 2, she talks more about student loans, who actually “lives off taxpayers,” why gold reserves aren’t a great idea anymore, the importance of mobility in worker power, and whether ROI is a good measure for the work of government. If this two-parter was too much, blame the listener who said he didn’t like it when we used the timer back in May.Support the Optimist Economy podcast by becoming a paid subscriber on Substack, or donating at https://buymeacoffee.com/optimisteconomy

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