Friday, July 3, 2015

Unemployment is down...

Unemployment is down...  At least, the official number is.  But if you look at labor force participation (a much more useful measure, in my view), it's down to 62.6% – a number last seen in 1977.  For those of you who are less ancient than I am, let me remind you that 1977 was Jimmy Carter's first year in office.  The country was suffering from a terrible recession, partly driven by skyrocketing oil prices.  In that context, consider that our labor force participation rate has just declined to a level matching those parlous economic times.  Yeah, that's how good our economy is doing!

For the government to claim that unemployment is falling sounds like Orwellian doublethink, no?

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