Friday, October 25, 2013

Participation

When you're talking unemployment, it is instructive to remember that by definition, you can be unemployed for only a limited amount of time.  Once you exceed that time your unemployment benefits lapse and you drop off the rolls of the unemployed.  So, if a bazillion people lose their jobs, stay unemployed until their benefits run out, and still don't find a job, they're not unemployed any longer.

Courtesy of the Cajun, we find a little graph that shows labor force participation.  It's instructive because even if the official unemployment numbers get better, we see that there are a hell of a lot of people out of work.

Very instructive.  When our President first took office, the labor force participation rate stood at about 66%.  Now it's down to less than 64%.  We've lost a lot of people in the labor force, and many of those have part-time jobs thanks to our President's policies.

Now, if you'll excuse me I have to leave this computer and get ready to go to work.  I'm one of the lucky 63% who gets up and goes to work every day.

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