Want to Lower Employment #, Just Reduce # of People Looking For Jobs
02/03/2012 2 Comments
Russ Steele
I have written about the declining number of people looking for jobs that are no longer figured in the employment numbers which are now at 8.3%. Zero Hedge has the details on how we got to 8.3%. It was not more jobs, but fewer workers looking for jobs.
A month ago, we joked when we said that for Obama to get the unemployment rate to negative by election time, all he has to do is to crush the labor force participation rate to about 55%. Looks like the good folks at the BLS heard us: it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million. No, that’s not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation.
A BLS Hockey Stick
As the labor force declines, fewer people are working. The population is not declining as fast as the work force, who is feeding these people not in the work force?
About Russ Steele
Figures don’t lie but liars figure. I know how this works because I had two periods of time where I was out of work for 2 years each and in that time I wasn’t collecting unemployment or taking advantage of any government program. How could they have known I was looking for work? To the government I was just one of the people who gave up looking but every day I was putting in time looking for work. It must of been a big surprise when I went from the not looking to employed.
I don’t understand what everyone is so concerned about. I have been unemployed hundreds of times over the past 30 years without collecting any unemployment. It happens every time I finish the tool I am working on.