Posted on 03/06/2015 8:04:52 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
The Department of Labor announced today that the official unemployment rate fell to 5.5 percent last month, the lowest its been since Spring of 2008. Good news, right? Well, kind of. The official unemployment rate masks a problem thats been plaguing the economy since shortly before the 2009 recession: a continuing decline in the labor force participation rate, which basically measures the percentage of the able-bodied population thats either working or looking for work. After holding steady at roughly 66 percent from 2004 through late 2008, the labor force participation has been falling, and falling, and falling some more, with no end in sight.
This decline has significant effects on the official unemployment rate. People who are unemployed and eventually stop looking for work are no longer counted as being part of the labor force, which means theyre no longer counted by U.S. statistical agencies as being unemployed (you can read in detail about the math underlying this dynamic here). The result? An artificially low official unemployment rate.
So what does the unemployment rate picture look like if you take into account all of the labor force droputs since the end of the recession in June of 2009? Not pretty. If you take those labor force dropouts into account, the U.S. does not have an unemployment rate of 5.5 percent. Instead, it has a likely unemployment rate of 9.6 percent, and thats hardly good news.
I think 9.6 is low.
My first thought was 9.6 ?
I thought it would be much higher.
CNN was bubbly this morning with the great unemployment news. Many of us know better.
It’s their job to feed the sheeple propaganda.
If you're not a big campaign bundler for Obama, or working in a government position, you are quite unlikely to be doing better under Obama.
Lot of sources say 23% unemployment is the real number.
I agree the REAL number is more like 12-14%
At least that’s what Fox Business people have been saying for quite some time.
And .. one of the reasons the liberal news is not faring so well is more and more people are being exposed to the truth.
Unemployment rate falls as all-time high number drop out of labor force
Employers added 295K jobs in February
Trey GarrisonMarch 6, 2015 7:45AM
It is.
This article is highlighting a single variable.
The definition of "employed" includes a lot of people that a practical person would hardly consider employed in a realistic, real world sense. 2 hours a week mowing lawns is defined as fully employed in that mythical 5.5%.
The 50 hour a week $60k middle management person is counted the same now that he is working 10-20 hours a week for minimum wage.
And so on, ad nauseum.
Yes you have explained it quite well.
Is this corrected for baby boomer retirements?
We are a demographic bulge. A drop in participation rate should follow.
Remember when the Rats were slamming Bush’s 4% to 5% unemployment rate as the “worst economy since the Great Depression”?
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