Free Republic

Quick question: What was the most startling element of the dreary December jobs report? If you said it was that everyone seemed to have forgotten the fact that it tends to snow around Christmas, thus skewing the data — an idea supported by the White House — you’d be wrong. The real shocker was the continued deterioration in labor participation by those who should be in the prime of their working lives — young and middle-age males. While the labor-force participation rate dipped to a 36-year low, the trend for middle-age males was even more worrisome.

There is a bright spot in the March jobless numbers, if government is your line of work. The unemployment rate for civilian government workers dropped to 3.6 percent in March from 3.8 percent in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. …

Trying to figure out what the “official” unemployment rate means can be very frustrating. Much of what we hear is complex and counter intuitive. The numbers seem inconsistent with what people are experiencing and many people are simply losing interest. We hear about growth in the non-institutional population, a decline in the labor participation rate, people who are unemployed and want a job not being counted as unemployed just because they haven’t looked for a job in 30 days, and people who are working part time because they are unable to find full time employment being counted as fully employed....

1. 9.1 percent. Today's unemployment rate is the highest it has been since 1982. 2. 131.2 million. The total number of jobs held by Americans in August. In January 2000, total nonfarm employment stood at 130.8 million. That means that over the past decade or so, less than 400,000 jobs have been added overall. At the same time, the eligible work-age population (those older than age 16, who are not in the military or prison) has grown by 28 million.

<p>U.S. companies slashed payrolls for a seventh straight month in August, raising new worries that a weak jobs market could shackle the budding economic recovery despite a slight improvement in the overall unemployment rate.</p> <p>Payrolls fell by 93,000 last month after a loss of 49,000 jobs in July, the Labor Department reported from its survey of U.S. businesses. Analysts had expected an improving economy to create 12,000 jobs.</p>