Weekend Economists Piece for Peace April 3-5, 2015

[Demeter]

76. The Friday Jobs Report Has Generated a Lot of Response

Unemployment Report Shows Labor Force Drop Outs At Record High

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/unemployment-report-shows-labor-force-drop-outs-record-high-5728

The March unemployment rate remained the same, yet once again the BLS survey showed another huge increase in those not considered part of the labor force anymore and as a result the figure hit a record 93.175 million high. The official unemployment rate is 5.5%. The labor participation rate is also 62.7% and remains at 37 year record lows. From a year ago, the number of people considered not in the labor force has increased by over two million.

This article overviews and graphs the statistics from the Employment report Household Survey also known as CPS, or current population survey. The CPS survey tells us about people employed, not employed, looking for work and not counted at all. The household survey has large swings on a monthly basis as well as a large margin of sampling error. The CPS has severe limitations, yet, it is our only real insight into what the overall population are doing for work.

Those employed grew by only 34,000 this month. This is within the margin of error of the survey. From a year ago, the employed has increased by 2.535 million. This is beyond what is needed to keep up with increased population growth.

Those unemployed decreased by -130,000 to stand at 8,575,000. From a year ago the unemployed has decreased by -1.81 million. Below is the month change in unemployed and as we can see, this number normally swings wildly on a month to month basis.

Those not in the labor force increased by 277,000 persons and to bet 93,175,000. The below graph is the monthly change of the not in the labor force ranks. Those not in the labor force has increased by 2,098,000 in the past year.

The labor participation rate is at 62.7%, a -0.1 change from last month. Those aged 16 and over either working or looking for work is still at record lows, as shown in the below graph.

The low labor participation rate is not all baby boomers and people entering into retirement. Below is a graph of the labor participation rate for those between the ages of 25 to 54. These are the prime working years, so one cannot blame retirement and college on the declining participation rate. The 25 to 54 age bracket labor participation rates have not been this low since the 1980's recession and the rate stands at 80.9%.


MORE AND CONCLUSION: (THE GRAPHS WON'T REPRODUCE FOR ME--SEE LINK)

There is much more to the household survey yet the real news is the record breaking numbers of those not in the labor force. There is no way these figures could swell so much on just the baby boomers retiring.