That's what has been mostly driving down the unemployment rate. In a recent op-ed piece by Jim Clifton, Chairman and CEO at Gallup, he says the unemployment rate is a big lie. "Right now, as many as 30 million Americans are either out of work or severely underemployed.
For quite a while I have been very suspicious of this "aging work force". The mainstream media has been reporting that they have been dropping like flies out of the labor force. Many times I've asked myself, "Why? Where have they all been going?"
About a week ago, Econompic posted some nice charts about recent shrinkage in the labor force. As they noted, without labor force shrinkage, the unemployment situation would look a lot more dire, rising above 10% for the nation as a whole.
In the period between March and August of this year, 837,200 persons left the labor force. This has had the ironic effect of driving down the unemployment rate in many states. Basically, unemployment is still up, but not up as much as it would be if people hadn't exited the labor force. The "economic recovery" at hand is thus largely a function of people who have lost all hope and stopped even looking for work.
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