this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
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2010 was when underutilisation started being collected.
What I was getting at though was that a historically normal level of unemployment is tricky to work out as the measure itself has changed over time, in part because the labour market has changed.
There are far more part time, casual, flexible roles today so even when the labour market gets worse, people may still be working some hours so they don't show up in unemployment stats, but they do in underutilisation. Employment has only been counted like this since (I think) the late 90s so it's not directly comparable to before then.
That makes sense. It's tricky with any survey data really. Over time the helpful question to be asking changes, so you can't really compare points that are far apart in time.