The problem is the number they consider working. BLS counts two people as having a job if a single person has two part-time jobs. So, that chart is useless.
I want a single number of individuals, identified uniquely by SSN, that have full-time salaried, full-time hourly, and less than full-time positions.
That they have but will not report.
I think CodeToad is talking about total labor participation and while you are talking about the marginal jobless market. CodeToad may very well be talking from a squeezed middle class citizen's point of view. You may be talking from a trader trading around government stats for the day.
We know that the median income had decreased significantly over the past six years. And we know that the median wealth of the average citizen has decreased by tens of thousands in the last decade. Both your posts are interesting in light of this post.
More Bad News for the Middle Class and Their Health Care
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3190003/posts
In the hospitals, we see the consequences. While the poor and the illegal immigrants get absolutely free care, the middle-class patients are collapsing financially under the strain of their deductibles and their lost income from their time off work, not to mention the additional stress of their illness. In our clinics, sick patients are choosing to forego testing, medicines, and surgery that they need solely because of cost. Instead they are living with their illnesses, often with cheap antibiotics as a means of delaying the inevitable.
To make matters worse, the patients getting their health care for free will ask for taxi vouchers, food stipends, and the like right in front of these other people, never thinking that what they are requesting is an affront to the sensibilities of the people paying their bills with our tax dollars. Seeing the middle class visibly suffer like this when the president told them during the elections that they would see their costs “go down $2,500 per family” is a heinous outcome of a preposterous government overreach.