Posted on October 2, 2015 by Personal Liberty
The Obama economy keeps setting and breaking records — the bad kind.
September’s jobs report, released Friday, shows the U.S. labor force participation rate at yet another record low, undercutting the already-underwhelming numbers that have been reported in recent months.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor force participation rate now stands at 62.4 percent, its lowest ratio in nearly four decades. That figure means 94,610,000 otherwise-qualified Americans had dropped out of the labor force as of Sept. 30.
That’s more than one-fourth of the population, including those not of working age, who are now unemployed — and who are convinced, for various reasons, that there’s no point in looking for work right now.
Leaving out all the people who find it pointless to job-hunt, regardless of whether there are 10 or 100 million of them, allows the government to present a sunny unemployment rate of 5.1 percent.
“The labor force participation rate declined to 62.4% after three months in a row at 62.6%. Participation remains near the lowest levels in decades,” a Forbes analysis observed following the report’s publication. “The U-6 rate, which measures under-employment, came in at 10% in September versus 10.3% in August and down from 11.3% a year earlier. The employment-population ratio was 59.2% from 59.4%.”
In addition, the August report — itself already a disappointment — was revised dramatically downward, following the accretion of more data a month after its initial release.
“[Job] [g]ains for August, initially recorded at 173,000, were revised lower to 136,000,” Forbes noted.
