From Ace:
If the labor force participation rate, which measures the size of the workforce (including those looking for work) against the work-aged population, had remained constant with where it was on the day Obama was inaugurated, the U-3 rate would be 10.9%.
In other words, the only reason the rate is as low as 8.2% is that an extraordinary number of people have given up looking for work altogether.
5 comments:
What Ace misstates here (but not intentionally) is that the rate has fallen because people have given up looking for work.
Not quite correct. It has fallen because they have expired their unemployment benefits.
May people like myself and Christine are still out there looking for a job (hopefully at our level of the food chain) but are no longer counted as such because we are no longer able to collect unemployment. In my case I haven't been counted as unemployed since June of last year.
And if I do ever manage to get back towork I have no idea how I am ever going to repair the damage done to my finances.
Had my taxes done last week. Because I had to hit my IRA to keep paying the mortgage last year I can now count the federal government as one of my ceditors.
For many thousands of dollars. That I don't have.
Talk about a Mussolini complex! Classic.
Silvrlady
If the labor force participation rate, which measures the size of the workforce (including those looking for work) against the work-aged population, had remained constant with where it was on the day Obama was inaugurated, the U-3 rate would be 10.9%.
That seems about right. Here's a chart showing the labor force participation rate by month going back several years. It was 63.8% in March 2012 compared to 65.7% in January 2009 when Obama took office.
By comparison, Canada's participation rate last month was 66.6%, down from 66.8% at the May, 2006 census, when the American rate was 66.1%.
MR,
I think Ace is going with the government definition of not looking for work, which is, as you say, no longer receiving Unemployment Benefits.
I think Ace knows better. If he doesn't then, oddly, IBA has him beat on this subject.
That would be interesting.
Not in the stats either ... if you were, for instance, an IT expert, or an engineer designing wings, and you are now working for a cleaning company, or dunkin donuts, YOU ARE EMPLOYED.
Are you really?
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