Job Participation Decreases

Unemployment is down, and so is job participation. Welcome to the paradox of US government labor statistics. The two are linked. Unemployment is down because fewer people are counted as unemployed, not because they all got jobs. Job participation is at 62.6%. Real unemployment is therefore 37.4%, though the official unemployment rate is only 5.3%. The difference between 37.4% and 5.3% is a lot of caveats and qualifiers that don’t matter if you need a job but don’t have one, or a good enough one.

(Click on the graph for the link.)

“Labor Market Runs In Place” – Bloomberg