{"id":60687,"date":"2015-07-03T07:25:51","date_gmt":"2015-07-03T11:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=60687"},"modified":"2015-07-03T06:49:14","modified_gmt":"2015-07-03T10:49:14","slug":"the-economy-keeps-on-drifting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=60687","title":{"rendered":"The Economy Keeps On . . . Drifting Aimlessly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, new job figures are out. And to anyone who actually knows their behind from a small intentionally shovel-excavated spot on the earth\u2019s surface, the new figures for June 2015 are not exactly good news<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yes, \u201cofficial\u201d unemployment is now at 5.3%<\/a>. But alone, that statistic tells you squat. Since \u201cofficial\u201d unemployment doesn\u2019t count discouraged workers who\u2019ve said \u201cscrew it\u201d and quit looking for work, it is actually possible for the economy to lose<\/em> jobs while unemployment goes down<\/em> at the same time.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s pretty much what happened last month. Unemployment went down because so many people said the hell with it and quit looking for a job \u2013 not because the economy created a plethora of new jobs (job creation was lower than during the previous month). Oh, and wages are effectively stagnant right now, too.<\/p>\n

The most meaningful number for gauging the state of the economy is the labor participation rate. And there, the news isn\u2019t so good.<\/p>\n

The US labor participation rate is the fraction of the civilian labor force (more precisely, the civilian non-institutional population) that is either actually working or actively looking for work. Today, the US civilian labor force is 250,663,000. But of that group, only a total of 157,037,000 are actively participating today – 148,739,000 are working, while another 8,299,000 are actively looking for work.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a labor participation rate of 62.6<\/strong>%. The US labor participation rate hasn\u2019t been that low since the first year of the Carter Administration<\/em><\/span> \u2013 in October 1977, to be precise. That month it was 62.4%; it hasn’t been below 62.7% since.\u00a0 Until last month, that is.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s put that in perspective. In January 2009, the US labor participation rate was 65.7%. If that were the case today, the US labor force would have 164,686,000 people either working or actively looking for work.\u00a0 With 5.3% unemployment, a 65.7% participation rate would mean we\u2019d need 156,397,000 people working \u2013 or about 7.65 million more jobs than exist today<\/em>.\u00a0 With the number that are working working today – 148,739,000 – if we had a labor participation rate of 65.7% we’d have a 9.7% unemployment rate.<\/p>\n

Even if unemployment today were the same as it was in January 2009 (7.8%), with a 65.7% labor participation rate we\u2019d need about 152,770,000 people working. We\u2019re well over 4 million jobs short of that<\/em>, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cRecovery\u201d?\u00a0 Yeah, right. \u00a0In the best measure of economic wellness – labor participation rate – the US economy is at freaking Carter Administration<\/em> levels.<\/p>\n

And we’ve been at those levels for a while, too.\u00a0 The labor participation rate has been stuck at Carter Administration levels since January 2012 – or for the last 3 1\/2 years<\/em><\/span>.<\/p>\n

“Recovery”?\u00a0 What<\/u><\/em> damn recovery?\u00a0 The economy is still<\/span> stuck in neutral, and has been for 3 1\/2 years.\u00a0 Before that, it was in free-fall for about 3 years.<\/p>\n

Call me when the labor participation rate has been rising consistently for a few months. Then we can talk seriously about an economic \u201crecovery\u201d having begun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, new job figures are out. And to anyone who actually knows their behind from a … The Economy Keeps On . . . Drifting Aimlessly<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[220,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-floggings-will-continue-until-morale-improves","category-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}