Wow look at the news! The unemployment rate ticked downwards to a stellar 7.7%! This must mean that everyone has a job now and things are looking great! Obama can notch up another win!
Or so you would think reading this news from our main stream media... You have to dive for truth behind the numbers. Unemployment is defined as by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as people who do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the past four weeks, and are currently available for work. Also, people who were temporarily laid off and are waiting to be called back to that job are included in the unemployment statistics. The 7.7 percent is misleading at the surface, much more telling is the Labor Force Participation rate. Which is the percentage of working-age persons in an economy who are employed or unemployed but looking for a job. That number is 63.5% for February. This means there is a huge number of unemployed, much higher then 7.7%.
"The number of people with full-time jobs fell by 212,000, while 382,000 Americans took part-time jobs, thus producing the reported 170,000 gain in total employment (which includes everyone who worked at all). “Full-time-equivalent” (FTE) jobs, which we can approximate as the number of full-time jobs plus the number of part-time jobs divided by two, fell by 21,000."
Really does not look as rosy as our Journalists are reporting...? Not much cause for celebration.
The Labor force participation rate dropped in February. You can look at prognostication and ascribe meaning to any number. The fact remains people are out of work and jobs are scarce.
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