Continued Ways of Malaise - Granite Grok

Continued Ways of Malaise

labor Workforce Participation 1978-2014

When Liberals attempt to make hay out of today’s Labor Report, you should nudge them to look at all the data, not just the parts that soothe their cognitive dissonance about this economy and the disaster that is the Obama administration’s mishandling of it.

And, after all, data must always be put into context and shown relative to historical trends – it can always be made to look good in isolation.

The first metric in the report shows that the economy added 217,000 jobs in May, a little short of the predicted 218,000.  Not a tragic difference, so they will try to applaud that.  Fine.  I’m glad these people got jobs.


But, you have to ask, “what kind of jobs are these?“, “were they full time or part time?“, and “were they in the government or the private sector?”  You should also ask, “how does this number compare to the past, say, 3-4 years, when the recession was at its worst?”  Summarily, it’s a drop from April’s 282,000 (which was originally reported as 288,000 but later revised downward).

“We’re operating way below potential”

Secondly, the unemployment rate “held steady” at 6.3%, instead of going up to 6.4% – another minor difference, this time favoring the economy and beating predictions.  However, the key question everyone seems to now generally understand is, “well, yeah, but how many people were looking for work in order to be reported?” and “how many people simply gave up looking for work?”  Of course, the unemployment rate is going to “hold steady” (or even decrease), if large swaths of people who were looking but could not find a job, simply stopped looking and being counted.

That leads us to the final metric in the report: The “Labor Force Participation Rate“, which came in at 62.8%, settling back to the level we saw in January, 2014, when it tied the low record from 1978.  You remember 1978, right?  Inflation at 12.%, unemployment at 7.1%, prime rate at 11%, and general malaise.

The graph shown here tells an ugly story, how we’ve sunk to the lows of the Carter-era; but Barack Obama is not done yet and still has another year-and-a-half to surpass Carter’s dubious performance.

The analyst in the graph’s news story tries to paint a “what difference does it make?” argument, saying the drop is merely “demographic”.  What he mean is that, since the population of the United States is aging, fewer people are working or looking for work than in 1978 and that it has “been declining for the past 15 year” anyway.

“Lowest Labor Participation level since 1978”

Well, I don’t buy it (and neither does this September, 2013 CNN report) when I look at the curve.  Yes, the trend has been prevailing downward since 2000 but there were ups and down between 2000 and 2007, indicating that it may not have had to take the severe plunge we’ve seen since.

Some try to deflect responsibility – but I find it strange that so many already-negative trends took serious nosedives right about the time Barack Obama took office – and have gotten worse since.

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