“But employment has decreased steadily since Obama has been President in any event, which means the number of unemployed has been steadily going up, despite the dubious machinations of ‘unemployment’ reporting methods (see link below).”
I don’t know why you stopped at Obama. If you change the timeframe of the chart you linked to to also encompass years prior to Obama you’ll see that labor force participation has been steadily declining since the year 2000 and really took a nosedive during the Great Recession.
Not really.
The graph peaks in 1999 or so, stays steady until 2001, then drops for three years or so until 2004.
Again, the graph levels out until the end of 2008, then nosedives at twice the previous rate, dropping 2 1/2 percentage points in three years as opposed to the 1% observed form 2001 - 2004.
In fact, if you run the chart all the way back to the beginning (1948), this is the most remarkable, startling and precipitous drop in employment since records have been kept.
To restate: There has never been a drop like this in our lifetime, certainly not since WWII.
And THAT is a pretty good reason to stop at Obama.