This year’s job market has been bleak, to say the least. Layoffs hit the highest level in 14 years; job openings are barely budging; and quits figures are plummeting. It’s no wonder people feel stuck and discouraged—especially as many candidates have been on the job hunt for a year.
But some mid-career professionals are working with the cards they’ve been dealt by going back to school. Many are turning to data analytics, cybersecurity, AI-focused courses, health care, MBA programs, or trade certifications for an “immediate impact on their careers,” Metaintro CEO Lacey Kaelani told Fortune.
But while grad school can certainly offer the opportunity to level-up your career once you’ve completed a program, it comes with financial and personal sacrifices, like time. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, one year of grad school, on average, costs about $43,000 in tuition. That’s nearly 70% of the average salary in the U.S.
Wait…
If you’re still actively seeking jobs you’d still be counted in the official unemployment category of U-3 unemployment. Even if you weren’t applying to jobs but still wanted to work you’d be counted in the (potentially more accurate) U-6 unemployment, right?
source
Normally, in a more sane and functioning world, you’d simply be correct.
I was a bit overzealous, I myself have given up looking because of the massive shadow jobs problem, the interview processes are ridiculous, etc etc, I erroneously transposed that onto them as well.
However, because Trump fired the head of the BLS, and Elon/DOGE cut back their workforce a good deal…
https://www.nisa.com/perspectives/heavily-distorted-cpi-print-reveals-little-useful-information/
https://www.markets.com/analysis/cpi-estimation-methodology-concerns-us-1010-en
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-11/bls-leans-more-on-second-best-option-for-filling-in-cpi-blanks
https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/imputation.htm
For most of this year, they haven’t even had enough staff to actually directly measure about a third of what goes into CPI… they just take the old data, run a model on it, predict it forward, and pretend thats real data.
They call this ‘carry forward price imputation’ or something like that.
So they’re just using some esoteric price model(s) to estimate, instead of actually gather, a bunch of data that is then treated as if it is real data, for the next stages of actually calculating the various cpi segments.
If they’re that fucked at doing cpi, they’re almost certainly also fucked at actually doing the Household Survey properly.
Granted, I can’t strictly prove this, because I do not have a team of forensic accountants auditing their data…
… But, having worked as varying kinds of data analyst, I can say with high confidence that the BLS methodology itself is flawed, and their ability to actually undertake that methodology is severely hamstrung for this whole year.
You don’t end up realizing that you overcounted job growth by a fucking million jobs… if you have a sound methodology.
… So thats a very long way of saying ‘well technically, if you wanna get technical, actually, this is all horseshit at this point, thus the person I’m replying to probably isn’t actually being counted, via problems that go outside/beyond the simple stated BLS methodology.’
You make a very good point. I’ve stopped using CDC for any realistic data or health guidance and instead defer to Health Canada or the NHS.
I should have also assumed economic data from the trump administration was equally suspect now.