Case and Deaton again. I didn't see this originally but it's an unsurprising correlation. turns out that if your life has gone to shit to the point where you have no insurance, high medical bills and a shitty job, Trump's your guy.
On a related note, the unemployment rate may be 5% but the Gallup Good Job Index is at 45%. So... less than half of adults over 18 have "30-plus hours per week for an employer who provides a regular paycheck."
It's a shame the Good Job Index has only been tracked since 2010. It would be nice to know what it looks like in a good economy. It appears to be increasing in the last six years, but of course that would be expected in a growing economy. Do you know if anyone has tried to estimate what it may have looked like in, say, 2006?
Mauldin had this (and more!) buried in one of his rambling-ass "I have a point I'm just too lazy to look for it" emails. I've never heard much that is good about Gallup or its methods but a lot of what I've heard is in the fashionable "Nate Silver hates on pollsters" vein. The whole thing is new to me; I've heard mention by a number of people that "jobless claims" are re-defined on a regular basis. I've seen some impressively ridiculous flowcharts that determine what is or isn't unemployed. For California's sake, for example, I worked three days last week which means I don't count as unemployed and looking for work until June. I also count as "employed" for the entire month of May. Buried in the same Mauldin headvomit was this interesting bit of terminology from the WSJ: