Month: October 2024

As long as we're on the subject of disasters, here is NOAA's estimate of the cost of large disasters over the past half century:

Both the number of big disasters per year and the cost per year have gone up about 6x since the '80s.

Three weeks ago:

Republicans in disaster-prone states, eager to present a united front during government funding talks, are shrugging off a disaster aid cliff — even as a storm barrels toward the Gulf Coast.

....“Disasters happen,” said Florida Republican Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, chair of the State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, when asked about Johnson's continuing resolution.... “I'm not too concerned at this stage.”

That CR bailed on supplemental disaster aid, but it failed so Republicans tried again a week ago:

Lawmakers from disaster-prone states — on both sides of the aisle — were aghast this week at the lack of additional dollars for FEMA’s already depleted disaster relief fund and other federal disaster programs.

As the House and Senate’s top four leaders met last weekend to negotiate a deal to keep the government funded, they were forced to acquiesce to the demands of Congress’ most conservative fiscal hawks, whose votes were thought to be pivotal for passage.... The funding omission was made all the more striking by the fact that lawmakers were leaving Washington two days ahead of schedule, in part because of the hurricane.

Still no disaster aid, even with Helene barreling toward the coast. Today, though, the leader of the Republican Party is playing a different tune:

Just fuck these guys. That's all. Just fuck them.

Intelligent.com is a college prep company that, among other things, promises to "equip students with the tools they need to smoothly transition from academic life to professional success."

Guess what? In a recent report, they say that recent college grads are unprepared for work and and getting fired in vast numbers. They need help from Intelligent.com! Employers need their help too! Isn't that a coincidence?

This got randomly picked up last week by the Daily Mail. A couple of days later the Washington Examiner got in the act, citing the Mail for some reason instead of the original report and going on to lay the blame for this sorry state of affairs on American colleges with their "trigger warnings" and "safe spaces" and other woke folderol.

As it turns out, though, the Intelligent.com survey tells us nothing. It says that (a) some indistinct number of recent grads haven't been successful; (b) 60% of employers have fired "some" of their recent grads; and (c) there are various reasons for this. There is no comparison with the past. Nor is there anything about these numbers that strikes me as unusual in any way.

I encourage you to click the link if you think I'm slanting this in any way. I'm not.

So in the end this is just another entry in the genre of poll slop that's become so common these days. Companies have found they can get some good free PR by running a cheapie online poll and banging out a press release about it. In this case, it was a self-selecting survey done by Pollfish, a "DIY market research provider."

Who cares, right? In a world of skyrocketing slop, this is probably the least of our worries. But it reminds me of a genuine curiosity: why is it that we have no idea how many people get fired? We have things that circle around it: How afraid are you of being fired? How many layoffs have there been? How many total job separations? What's your current employment status? But no plain household survey that asks if you've been fired in the past year.

That seems odd to me. Even if the feds aren't interested in this, you'd think maybe Gallup or some other private outfit would be. But not that I can find. Why not?

BY THE WAY: After all this, are you curious about how many Gen Z workers are getting fired? I can't tell you, of course, but there are a few related statistics:

• Job tenure figures haven't budged. Young workers are staying with their jobs about the same as always.
• Among all Gen Z workers, unemployment has spiked slightly compared to previous years and older generations, but that's probably just the usual consequence of a slowing economy:
  .
  
• Among Gen Z college grads, the unemployment rate in 2022 was 2.7% compared to 4.8% in 2012.
• Among all ages, the fear of being let go hasn't changed recently:
  .
  

Take this for what it's worth: not much, but not nothing. There's no particular evidence that Gen Z is having any more trouble in the workplace than previous generations.