National unemployment rate ticks down to 7%

That's kind of what the article I mentioned stated, but since A) I've seen the unfunded liability disaster claim being thrown around a lot in conservative circles and B) his (presumed) national debt figure was grossly inflated I wanted to make sure he wasn't talking about something that I was previously unaware of.

Considering that he didn't provide any context to his figures I'm assuming these are what he was referring to and was simply incorrect.

That was foxhound_fox, not me.

Got confused lol, my bad.

Yeah I was sort of thinking this too. I do suppose it's what people are most use to hearing about though so quick assumptions are sort of understandable. While I'm guilty of not reading actual articles myself I do wish people would at least read the OP.

I rarely read ops fully/closely

People should actually read the op thoroughly if they are going to try and fully engage with the topic

We know, Dave. We've learned to accept it :-P

It's because the percentage of Americans in the workforce is at its lowest point since 1978 and even lower than this time last year.

People have dropped out of the workforce and therefore aren't counted.

I wonder how much of that is accounted for because of generational gaps.

Shouldn't matter. The workforce should be larger. People have given up entirely or retired early, etc. In a better economy those people would still be working.

Why should the workforce be larger when the largest generation is getting around the age where they're either retiring, choosing to work longer than they could or dying? From what I've seen economists actually seem worried about people that age continuing work because of the bad economy.

Nope. The trend over the last five years in the U.S. was for unemployed people near retirement giving up and simply retiring. This isn't unusual during a recession.

However, what is unusual is chronic unemployment and the fact that when jobs are eliminated they aren't replaced. So the number of people looking for jobs remains fairly steady while the supply of jobs doesn't keep up.

The result is a decrease in worker participation.

"Construction companies added 17,000 jobs in November, up 42% from the previous month, as the housing market rebound created more demand. And the nation's factories added 27,000 workers, the most in 20 months and 69% more than in October."

You didn't answer my question. Why should the workforce be larger? It's been a downward trend for over a decade. This lines up fine when you look at the sizes of generations. Why should we be expecting an increase in the workforce when the number of trained, able bodied, people is decreasing? If people are indeed retiring before they would otherwise due to lack of jobs then the problem is at the top, not the bottom as people seem to be saying.

Worker participation rate is a percentage. It's a measure of both people looking for jobs and working.

The worker participation rate this many years after the recession should be increasing not decreasing.

Its seen small increases in a relative way the last few years. But its on a downward trend and has been since the late 90s, back when the economy didn't blow. Why should it increase? You're not answering the question. You're concerned about symptoms but not the cause or the cure.

We are at a 30 year low. After every other recession during that time the worker participation rate increased not decreased. Under Reagan, for example, working participation increased 2.5% after the recession of the early 80s.

The cause of a low worker participation rate is a lack of jobs. Not that complicated.

This is a really circular argument. It's like going to a doctor because you've got a sore throat and him telling you your throat is sore because you've been coughing so much and leaving it at that. You see the problem here is that it is complicated.

No it really isn't that complicated. More jobs per worker equals higher participation rate. Fewer jobs per worker equals lower participation rate.

The current participation rate is at a 30 year low. The worker participation under Obama dropped over 3% since becoming president!

You're more concerned with finding easy blame than solutions. Well that answers the real question I had.

I only ever posted initially to explain why unemployment dropped. It's because workforce participation isn't growing since unemployment doesn't count those who have dropped out or are still looking for work but don't qualify for unemployment.

And I'm an answers sort of person, not a scapegoat sort of person. Just double checking I know which type you are.

that's the U-3, what's the U-6 unemployment rate?

It's KC_hokie. You should have probably abandoned the "debate" about 1 million posts ago when he simply ignored your population aging argument (which is in fact the primary reason for labor participation rate decline, in almost all developed nations) and posted some random shit about the definition of some basic economic terms because he's either a massive troll or too illiterate/inattentive to understand anything deeper than constant repetition and dictionary quoting. At least we wouldn't have gotten several ginormous quote towers in the process. Holy fucking Jesus.

If people understood just how ridiculously flawed all these stupid polls are, they'd all shut up and do something productive for once.

Thanks Bernanke. Lol at anyone giving credit to Obama.

Inflation is still weak though.

@SpartanMSU: hey if you are going to blame the president for the bad times it seems a bit odd to not give him credit for the good that gets accomplished.

@Serraph105: we shouldn't follow that logic

Unemployment figures are ridiculous because:

a) People drop out of workforce

b) Count part-time jobs

c) People retiring early because they can't find a job

d) A lot of people are overqualified for their jobs

@JDWolfie:

*Sigh* the article I posted touched upon all of those things you mentioned.

@Serraph105: Okay, maybe in this one particular study this didn't happen. But for the most part, the majority of unemployment numbers going down are because of these reasons.

Any actual economic report touches on all of those things.

It has just become popular in the media to either A) ignore those when reporting to simplify/make the jobs report more favorable, or B) in the case of many conservative outlets, act as though those numbers weren't accounted for in a study, when they actually were, so as to maintain healthy pessimism.

Sometimes it takes giant quote towers to get people to say what you want them to. They'll do it eventually though. Also yeah I'll fix those giant quote things since gamespot just makes them giant spaces now.

participation rate is down 3% from when he entered, that is 10+ million fewer persons in the work force, average income has also decreased, fewer jobs making less money is a win for fools only.