Unemployment rate falls to 6.7%, but not because the economy is awesome or something…

It’s the same old story we’ve been hearing for years now. The unemployment rate falls, the White House rejoices and takes credit, and the real story of millions just dropping completely out of the workforce never really gets told. It’s all a big fraud to bring the unemployment number down and it’s happened again:

THE FEDERALIST – According to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released this morning, the U.S. economy last month added 74,000 new payroll jobs, while the unemployment rate fell to 6.7 percent from 7.0 percent. Good news, right? Not really.

Yes, the unemployment rate has fallen significantly from its high of 10 percent in October of 2009. But it turns out the unemployment rate has been falling for a pretty depressing reason: people dropping out of the labor force. Last month, 347,000 workers dropped out, effectively sending the message that it wasn’t even worth looking for work anymore.

Here’s what the unemployment rate would look like if the labor force participation rate — basically the number of people in the economy working or looking for work — had remained constant since June of 2009:

Labor-Force-Dropouts-Drive-Lower-Unemployment-Rate-TheFederalist

Why June of 2009 and not some other random month? That is when the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee — a group of economists who determine when recessions end and begin — believe the most recent recession finally ended.


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