10 Oct 2017 8:43 am
As I have noted many times, the Real Unemployment Rate remained at around 9% for Obama's entire presidency, because the number of jobs created barely kept up with the increase in work-age Americans.Misty » 08 Oct 2017 12:16 pm » wrote: Until you can explain to me why we should believe any numbers put out by the government when our president told us over and over that we couldn't trust those numbers, then I have nothing to say to you.
It takes around 2% growth just to create enough jobs to keep up with population growth.
During the Obama administration, a major reason the unemployment rate declined was that fewer people were in the labor force because what the BLS calls the labor participation rate continually declined as people gave up the search for a job or retired. For purposes of the official unemployment rate, if you have not looked for a job in the past 30 days, the BLS considers you out of the labor force.
Under President Obama, labor participation hit lows last seen in the late 1970s.
So rather than a true reflection of labor market strength, the declining unemployment rate was, in great part, a reflection of the declining percentage of people actively looking for work....
An even better indicator of labor market strength than the official unemployment rate is what the BLS calls the U-6 unemployment rate, a broader measure that many economists consider the real unemployment rate. It counts people as unemployed for a year after they give up their job search, rather than just 30 days, and discounts the importance of part time jobs by counting people as unemployed who are working part time because they are unable to find full time jobs.
At 8.3 percent, this measure has dropped more than a percentage point since January
http://thehill.com/opinion/finance/3545 ... nder-obama